This course will consider contemporary Protestant and Roman Catholic approaches to fundamental moral theology, with special attention given to prospects for ecumenical collaboration. Following an initial presentation of the background of the theological bases for the traditional historical differences in the moral theology of Catholicism and Protestantism, the course will concentrate on several principal themes of fundamental moral theology, such as Sin and Grace, the Natural Law and Moral Norms, Discipleship, Role of Scripture in Christian Ethics, Moral Character and Virtue, and the Specific Character of Christian Morality.

Required Course Texts

Fuchs, Josef, S.J. Christian Morality: The Word Became Flesh. Translated by Brian McNeil. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press; Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987.

Gustafson, James M. Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Hauerwas, Stanley M., and Willimon, William H. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony: a Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know that Something is Wrong. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989.

Required Articles

** On reserve in the GTU library. In addition, each student will have to do additional reading for the required paper (which is in lieu of a final exam).

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. "The Commandment of God." In Ethics, 277-285. Translated by Neville Horton Smith. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

Gritsch, Eric W. and Jenson, Robert W. "Christian Life--Brave Sinning." Chapter 10 in Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings, 137-152. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976.

Gustafson, James M. "The Focus and Its Limitations: Reflections on Catholic Moral Theology." In Moral Theology: Challenges for the Future. Essays in Honor of Richard A. McCormick, S.J., 179-190. Edited by Charles E. Curran. New York: Paulist Press, 1990.

Hauerwas, Stanley M. "On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological." Chapter 2 in Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy, 16-42. Edited by Stanley M. Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

Macquarrie, John. "Rethinking Natural Law." In Readings in Moral Theology, No. 2, 121-145. Edited by Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.

Also found in Three Issues in Ethics, 82-110. New York: Harper and Row, 1970; and again in Curran and McCormick's Readings in Moral Theology, No. 7: Natural Law and Theology, 221-246. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1991.

--------

Recommended Books

Böckle, Franz. Law and Conscience. Translated by M. James Donnelly. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966. [Out of print]

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by Reginald H. Fuller, revised by Irmgard Booth. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Childress, James F., and Macquarrie, John, eds. The New Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967, 1986.

ECUMENICAL CHRISTIAN ETHICS

Course Syllabus

I. INTRODUCTION

II. PROPOSED MODEL FOR EVALUATION OF MORAL METHODOLOGY

III. OVERVIEW OF INITIAL DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT ETHICS

IV. SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY

V. RELATION OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY TO PROTESTANT ETHICS

VI. OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 17th AND 18th CENTURIES

VII. OVERVIEW OF 19th CENTURY LIBERAL PROTESTANTISM

VIII. PROTESTANT NEO-ORTHODOXY MOVEMENT

IX. POST WWII DEVELOPMENTS

X. CONTEMPORARY PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND ETHICIANS

XI. SUMMARY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC POSITION

XII. CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO THE NATURAL LAW

XIII. THE MORAL LIFE OF THE CHRISTIAN

XIV. SIN, GRACE AND REDEMPTION

XV. FINAL EVALUATION

ECUMENICAL CHRISTIAN ETHICS

James T. Bretzke, S.J.

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Brief personal introduction

B. Course Description and Overview

1. The Course itself

2. Final examination or paper

C. Course Readings

1. Required Course Texts

a. Fuchs, Josef, S.J. Christian Morality: The Word Became Flesh. Translated by Brian McNeil. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press; Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987.

(1) Leading 20th Century Roman Catholic moral theologian.

(2) Book is a series of key essays.

b. Gustafson, James M. Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

(1) CH. 1 HISTORIC DIVERGENCES

(2) CH. 2 PRACTICAL MORAL REASONING

(3) CH. 3 PHILOSOPHICAL BASES

(4) CH. 4 THEOLOGICAL BASES

(5) CH. 5 BASIC ISSUES AND PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE

c. Hauerwas, Stanley M., and Willimon, William H. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony: a Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know that Something is Wrong. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989.

2. Required Articles

a. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. "The Commandment of God." In Ethics, 277-285. Translated by Neville Horton Smith. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

b. Gritsch, Eric W. and Jenson, Robert W. "Christian Life--Brave Sinning." Chapter 10 in Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings, 137-152. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976.

c. Gustafson, James M. "The Focus and Its Limitations: Reflections on Catholic Moral Theology." In Moral Theology: Challenges for the Future. Essays in Honor of Richard A. McCormick, S.J., 179-190. Edited by Charles E. Curran. New York: Paulist Press, 1990.

d. Hauerwas, Stanley M. "On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological." Chapter 2 in Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy, 16-42. Edited by Stanley M. Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

e. Macquarrie, John. "Rethinking Natural Law." In Readings in Moral Theology, No. 2, 121-145. Edited by Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.

(1) Also found in Three Issues in Ethics, 82-110. New York: Harper and Row, 1970;

(2) and again in Curran and McCormick's Readings in Moral Theology, No. 7: Natural Law and Theology, 221-246. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1991.

3. Recommended Books

a. Böckle, Franz. Law and Conscience. Translated by M. James Donnelly. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966. [Out of print]

b. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by Reginald H. Fuller, revised by Irmgard Booth. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

c. Childress, James F., and Macquarrie, John, eds. The New Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967, 1986.

D. Apologia for this course

1. Scriptural and historical bases for "ecumenical" dialogue on moral matters (which, however, we will not develop extensively in this course).

2. Need to develop a methodology for ecumenical dialogue not just across confessional boundaries, but also within such groups

a. E.g. Lutherans with Evangelicals

b. Conservative and liberal Catholics

c. With other segments of society

(1) e.g. gender issues

(2) abortion issue, etc.

d. This may be a sub-text to our course.

3. Protestant Ecumenical Tradition

a. Broader and longer,

b. Will discuss in context of the genesis of the World Council of Churches later on in the course

c. Look to Roman Catholic "warrents" for ecumenism.

4. Mandate from Vatican II

a. Very "ethos" of the Council to which non-Catholic observers were invited.

b. Important speech of Msgr. De Smedt, Bishop of Bruges and member of Secretariat for Promoting Unity, delivered in the first session of Vatican II, on 19 November 1962:

(1) "For centuries, we Catholics have thought that it was sufficient to explain our doctrine clearly.

(2) "Non-Catholics thought the same. Both sides explained their own point of view using their own terminology and from their own point of view // only, but what Catholics said was not well received and vice versa.

(3) According to this method, no progress was made on the road toward unity, quite the reverse." pp. 155-156.

(4) "If we wish the documents issued by the Council to be intelligible to non-Catholics, a certain number of rules must be observed:

(a) 1. We must understand the doctrines of the Orthodox and Protestants.

(b) 2. We must know what they think (rightly or wrongly) about Catholic teaching.

(d) 4. Scholastic terminology is not well understood by non-Catholics; on the other hand, by using Biblical or patristic terms we can prevent many errors and prejudices.

(e) 5. Expressions must be carefully chosen with regard to their effect on non-Catholics.

(f) 6. Judgments must be carefully weighed and account must be taken of the context in which they appear to non-Catholics.

(g) 7. Documents must be worded in such a way as to appear convincing to non-Catholics also.

(h) 8. All useless controversy must be avoided.

(i) 9. Errors should be clearly rejected, but without wounding sensibilities." p. 156.

c. Unitatis Redintegratio, Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism: [in the section on "The Separated Churches and Ecclesial Communities in the West]: Quotation from #23 [Abbot translation]

(1) "And if in moral matters there are many Christians who do not always understand the gospel in the same way as Catholics, and do not admit the same solutions for the more difficult problems of modern society,

(2) nevertheless they share our desire to cling to Christ's word as the source of Christian virtue and to obey the apostolic command:

(3) `Whatever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him' (Col. 3:17).

(4) Hence, the ecumenical dialogue could start with discussions concerning the application of the gospel to moral questions."

5. Recent Papal Teaching

a. John XXIII's appeal to all men and women of good will,

b. which approach was continued in the writings of Paul VI, especially in Ecclesiam Suam (1964)

c. and reconfirmed in the ministry of John Paul II

(1) His basic outward, dialogic model stance

(2) E.g. Address to leaders of other confessions and religions,

(a) given at Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania on 2 September 1990

(b) "It is important to know what we mean when we say that we intend to follow the path of dialogue.

(c) In general, dialogue means reciprocal communication, mutual friendship and respect, as well as joining effort for the sake of shared goals, all in the service of a common search for truth.

(d) In the context of religious pluralism, `dialogue is a complex of human activities, all founded upon respect and esteem' for people of different religions. ...

(e) "It means the ecounter of theologians and other religious specialists to explore, with their counterparts from other religions, areas of convergence and divergence.

(f) "Where circumstances permit, it means a sharing of spiritual experiences and insights."

(g) [Also quoting his own Address to Members and Staff of the Secretariat for Non-Christians, 28 April 1987.

(3) E.g. Centesimus annus, #60

(a) Need for inter-religious cooperation in facing serious world problems, "not just a matter of economic production or of juridical or social organizations,

(b) but also calls for special ethical and religious values as well as changes of mentality, behavior and structures."

E. Theological Considerations of Ecumenical Dialogue

1. Bernard Häring, C.Ss.R. "Faith and Ecumenism." Chapter 6 in Free and Faithful in Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity, Volume II: The Truth Will Set You Free, 274-333. Middlegreen, Slough: St. Paul Publications, 1979.

2. Ecumenism as fundamental aspect of faith in Jesus Christ and the search for salvation truth

a. "Ecumenism is an indispensable expression of our faith in one Lord,

b. and a necessary way to come to a deeper understanding of the history of salvation and of salvation truth." [Häring, p. 275.]

c. "The Church understands herself as a pilgrim. In this perspective, ecumenical dialogue is a colloquium among various partners on pilgrimage, about their mutual relationships.

d. But far more it is a confrontation with their Lord who is the Truth and the Way.

e. Thus the dialogue among Christians becomes the dialogue of charisms.

f. The goal of this dialogue is always to find the other who is indispensable for our own existence in faith." [Häring, p. 300.]

g. "We have to take another look and ask ourselves if,

(1) in the light of a covenant morality,

(2) a morality of grace and faith,

(3) we have always done our utmost in the common search for truth.

(4) Have we done all that is in our power to tear down man-made barriers opposing Christian unity?" [Häring, p. 282.]

3. Importance of pneumatology

a. "Faith in the Holy Spirit does not allow a monopolistic attitude.

b. "By mutual openness, we adore the Spirit's freedom to work in all, through all and for all." [Häring, p. 276.]

c. "A basic characteristic of ecumenical spirituality is a strong faith in the Holy Spirit

d. and a new devotion to holy Scripture, which is seen as a book not only for the study of ecumenical problems but also as a source of strength and trust.

e. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to bring orthodoxy and orthopraxis together." [Häring, p. 305.]

4. Belief in the indefectibility of the Church

a. "Our first faith and faith-commitment is not to the actual form of our Church as it has developed historically after all the separations,

b. but is a commitment to Christ himself who wants his Church to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic in an all-inclusive sense." [Häring, p. 278].

5. Recognition of sin, sinfulness, and need for conversion

a. "As soon as we confess our own sins, we come to a more balanced vision of the other's situation." p. 282.

b. "The conversion of which we speak here is both personal and communal." p. 297.

c. "And when we speak on `conversion', we must never lose sight of the essential truth that it is a conversion to Christ, ..." [Häring, p. 297.]

6. Need for common commitment to service

a. "It becomes increasingly clear that the various Churches cannot unite fully in faith and in one Church unless they are consistently united in service to the world." p. 308.

b. Essentially implied in UR #23.

F. Current theological situation

1. Writings of various Christian ethicians

2. Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity

a. Thomas P. Rausch, S.J. "Ethical Issues and Ecumenism." America 160 (21 January 1989): 30-33.

b. In March, 1986 the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity "initiated a process of gathering information on those ethical and moral issues that might be the occasion for new divisions between them in the future." p. 31.

3. Ad Hoc Ethics Committee

a. assembled by Msgr. Royal M. Vadakin, director of the Los Angeles Archdiocesan Commission for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. Met for the first time on Sept. 10, 1986.

b. Identifying the issues:

(1) of substantial agreement;

(2) potential disagreement;

(3) actual conflict

(a) e.g., marriage,

(b) divorce.

c. Finding Common ground:

(1) e.g. Gustafson's approach in Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement, (1978).

(2) "According to Gustafson, the Protestant tradition is characterized by its concern for biblical categories, its affirmation of historical experience and its adherence to the Word of God as a guiding moral norm in concrete decision making.

(3) The Catholic tradition is known for its reliance on human reasoning, its careful analysis of concrete cases (casuistry) and its emphasis on tradition and moral authority in the formation of conscience.

(4) Each tradition can serve as a complement to the other. [Rausch, p. 31].

d. Less agreement about what should serve as the central paradigm for moral discourse: i.e.,

(1) natural law methodology or

(2) concrete human experience.

e. Communal focus:

(1) "In urging the retrieval of a communal focus, the committee wanted to stress that ethical values and language are acquired through interaction with a faith community that can provide a rich resource in the effort to respond to contemporary questions:

(2) "`A recovery and deepened appreciation of the historicality of each of our faith traditions is important lest we `forget' the roots that ground us.

(3) "The lack of these roots contributes to the sterile individualism and relativism that often substitute for solid ethical analysis.'" [Rausch, p. 33].

f. In November 1987 the committee submitted its report to the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

4. Continuing ecumenical challenge

a. collaboration

b. cross-fertilization

c. need to understand how we (Roman Catholics) are perceived, if we are to fulfill our own mission of evangelization effectively

(1) How we are perceived does not necessarily mean the perceptions are objectively true, or even "truthful" (i.e., free of deliberate prejudice, ill-will, etc.)

(2) In this context read the Gustafson article in the McCormick Festschrift

G. Basic Methodology: Dialogue and Discernment

1. Dialogue

a. Presumes something to give and to receive

(1) Teach and learn,

(2) mutual commitment to the search for greater understanding of the truth

b. Initial presumptions ala Roger Mehl

(1) Protestant, on the faculty at Strasbourg

(2) His Catholic Ethics and Protestant Ethics. The Warfield Lectures, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1968. Translated by James H. Farley. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971.

(3) "Discussion is possible only among men of good faith, and good faith presupposes a basic accord, an accord at the level of intentions.

(4) "But this accord is possible only if we admit that, in principle, we may possible learn something from the other, only if we admit that the position of the other can become a question for us." p. 10.

c. Methodology of its own

(1) Conversion to dialogue

(2) A Process

(3) 7 Stages of C.S. Song

(a) First Stage: The Room on the Other Side:

i) "My whole life experience is the basis by which I evaluate other worlds and other persons. What looks beautiful to me must look beautiful to others." p. 124. ...

ii) "There can be no easy interchange between religious and cultural infrastructures.

iii) To have a feel for other religions and cultures, you must experience them at their home base, and not speculate and cogitate about them in your own drawing room." p. 125.

(b) Second Stage: Search for the Familiar in the Unfamiliar:

i) "At the inception of interfaith dialogue we should admit to ourselves that we are looking for familiar things among unfamiliar things.

ii) "This is part of our nature as human beings. We are conditioned by our own peculiar culture, religion, history, and language. We are product of all these combined. They are part of us and we are part of them."

i) "The first sign of dialogical possibility appears here. ... Insofar as you are happy with your life conditions, you will not want to disturb them.

ii) And if you believe that your religious tradition is the only valid one, you will have no need to know how others behave toward God and humanity.

iii) For your interfaith dialogue is a waste of time.

iv) It is even a subtle denial of your uniqueness. You will want to have nothing to do with it." p. 128.

(d) Fourth Stage: Writing Our Own Story in Strange Lands:

(e) Fifth Stage: Blessed Ignorance:

i) "From stage one to stage four we believed we were in firm control of interfaith dialogue. But now we are less sure." p. 133.

ii) To confess our lack of understanding is the important turning point.

(f) Sixth Stage: Bilateral Agreement:

i) "With confession of ignorance, interfaith dialogue reaches a turning point. Dialogue has begun!

ii) "It begins with a radical reassessment of each other.

iii) We have entered the process of accepting and understanding each other." p. 135.

(g) Seventh Stage: Dialogical Conversion:

2. Discernment

a. Background, pegboard of fundamental Christian ethics.

b. Note convergences, divergences

c. Make connections,

d. Seek to understand why a position would be taken

e. Evaluate the internal coherence and logic of the position

f. Attempt to see how a particular Protestant theology or theologian is working out in reference to

(1) Other elements of theology, such as

(a) Ecclesiology

(b) Sacraments

(2) Traditional Roman Catholic moral theology (especially important for the early Reformers such as Luther and Calvin)

(3) And how contemporary theologians are re-interpreting "traditional" Protestant theological principles in a new way.

g. Work this discernment out in reference to your own understanding of moral theology:

(1) Its definition

(2) Its task

(3) Its scope

(4) Its sources and resources

(5) "Missing" elements in reference to the composite understanding of the above.

H. A Counter-productive methodology

1. Merely polemical

a. Example from art: see the two statue groups on either side of Ignatius' tomb in the Gesù.

b. Examples possible from both Protestant and Roman Catholic authors:

c. E.g. From A Handbook of Moral Theology by Anton Koch, edited by Arthur Preuss (St. Louis: Herder, 1918):

(1) "Catholic Moral Theology is based on the dogmatic teaching of the one true Church. Protestant ethics rests on arbitrary assumptions.

(2) ...Catholics acknowledge an infallible authority in questions of both dogma and morals, whereas Protestants possess no objective rule for either, but are buffetted to and fro by winds of subjectivism and error."

(3) (Quoted by James Gustafson in "Roman Catholic and Protestant Interaction in Ethics: An Interpretation." Theological Studies 50 (1989): 45.)

d. Or another example, Antonio Lanza and Pietro Palazzini, General Moral Theology: Vol. 1, Principles of Moral Theology, trans. W.J. Collins, M.M., (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1961), p. 109.

(1) "The Catholic moral doctrine, and it alone, has in itself the force to resolve fully the greatest problems of life, putting human activity on the safe way marked out by Christ,

(2) while the moral directives of other religious confessions have been shown and continuously show themselves unequal to this task."

2. Rigidly apologetic

a. The "return" ecclesial model:

(1) all must first admit their errors, and then return to the one true church

(2) which model has been proposed by both Roman Catholics and Protestants

b. Truth as a fixed possession

(1) "Apologetics presupposes a consciousness of one's own superiority... .

(2) Apologetics can be carried on only by a person who knows or thinks he knows that truth is a possession, and obviously, that he possesses this possession." [Mehl, p. 10.]

II. PROPOSED MODEL FOR EVALUATION OF MORAL METHODOLOGY

A. Introductory note on the role and importance of fundamental Christian ethics

1. Foundational

2. Basic methodology and introduction to concepts and tradition

3. Distinction from applied or special ethics

4. Parvus error in principiis, magnus error in conclusionibus [Small error in the beginning leads to great error in the conclusion].

B. Four Sector Grid for the Sources and "Languages" of Moral Theology

1. Scripture

2. Tradition

a. Traditional understanding, with a capital "T" as another virtual font of Revelation,

(1) transmitted through the Fathers,

(2) and the Magisterium (Roman Catholic)

(3) or other Church authoritative body or office.

b. Sandra Schneiders expresses a fuller notion of this concept:

c. "Tradition is the actualization in the present,

(1) in and through language,

(2) of the most valued and critically important aspects of the community's experience, or,

(3) more precisely, of the community's experience itself

(a) as it has been selectively appropriated

(b) and deliberately transmitted.

d. "Tradition is the primary form and norm of effective historical consciousness,

(1) which is the medium of ongoing community experience.

(2) It includes deliberately formulated belief, that is, dogma, but is by no means limited to dogma.

e. It includes

(1) liturgy,

(2) spirituality,

(3) the lives and teachings of exemplary believers,

(4) historical experiences,

(5) legislation,

(6) artistic creations,

(7) customs and much more.

f. "One of the tasks of each generation of believers is to appropriate the tradition,

(1) to enrich and purify it by living interaction with it,

(2) and to transmit it to the next generation." [Sandra Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991): 71.

g. Schneiders describes 3 meanings to tradition:

(1) "Tradition, as the foundational gift

(a) out of which the Church's experience unfolds throughout history,

(b) is the Holy Spirit

(d) making the Church the Body of Christ.

(2) "Tradition, as content,

(a) is the sum total of appropriated and transmitted Christian experience,

(b) out of which Christians throughout history select the material for renewed syntheses of the faith.

(3) "Tradition refers also to the mode

(a) by which that content is made available to successive generations of believers,

(b) the way in which the traditioning of the faith is carried on throughout history." [Schneiders, p. 72.]

h. Relationship between Scripture and Tradition:

(1) "In short, the relationship between tradition and scripture is that of a hermeneutical dialectic.

(2) "Scripture is produced as part of and witness to tradition;

(3) it // functions as the norm of that tradition;

(4) but it can only function as norm if it is interpreted from within and in terms of tradition." [Schneiders, pp. 82-83.]

3. Rational Reflection (Philosophy)

a. Recognition of two basic philosophical approaches:

(1) Deductive

(a) More easily linked with a classicist, static view of the world

(b) In the area of methodology, the classicist deductive approach emphasizes norms

i) as given

ii) often expressed in propositional language,

iii) eternal,

iv) universal,

v) immutable and unchanging, etc.

(2) Inductive

(a) More in line with a worldview of historical consciousness

(b) Emphasizes discovery of norms and values,

(d) the individual and the personal,

(e) the contingent, as culturally and/or historically conditioned,

(f) and therefore, except in rather general abstract formulations, difficult to set out as detailed moral norms, binding for all times and in all cultures, situations, etc.

b. Import of the choice of one or the other of these basic approaches for how one will come to ethics.

4. Empirical Data and Science (i.e. methodological interpretation of empirical data)

a. Moral importance of data: [Gustafson on Rahner]:

b. "The moralist is no longer self-sufficient in knowing the subject matter that is analyzed from a moral point of view, but must rely on knowledge that comes from relevant scientific specialists.

c. Rahner is not naive about reliance on specialists, but emphasizes the requirement for the moralist to take their conclusions into account.

d. A moral conclusion might well be altered by the inclusion or omission of relevant data." [Gustafson, Theocentric Ethics, V. 2, p. 67].

e. [Quoting Rahner]:

(1) "`It is at least possible that the very `detail' of which the theologian is ignorant,

(2) or of which he has only a vague notion,

(3) might be the decisive factor in his case; it might be the very detail which would alter the whole conclusion.'" [Gustafson, p. 69; Rahner TI 9:225]

f. [Cf. Theological Investigations 9: 205-24; 225-52]

5. Example of the medieval opinion about the sinfulness of sexual relations during a woman's menstrual period.

C. Mediated by Experience

1. Personal

2. Collective

3. Communal

4. Cultural

a. Key aspect of humanity

b. Often overlooked

c. or misunderstood by moralists.

D. Mediated also by one's understanding of the key elements of morality, such as

1. God

a. Helpful is Fuchs' article, "Our Image of God and the Morality of Innerworldly Behavior." Chapter 3 in Christian Morality: The Word Became Flesh, 28-49. Translated by Brian McNeil. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press; Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987.

b. German original: "Das Gottesbild und die Moral innerweltlichen Handelns." Stimmen der Zeit 202 (1984): 363-382.

2. Faith

a. Helpful is James Walter's article mentioned above, "The Relation between Faith and Morality: Sources for Christian Ethics." Horizons 9 (1982): 251-270.

(1) Outlines a spectrum of six ways of relating faith and morality used by various theologians.

(2) E.g. from morality collapsed into faith (Barth) to faith collapsed into morality (extreme moral autonomy school).

b. Revelation

c. Authority of Scripture

3. Human anthropology

a. Individual

b. Communal

c. Cultural

d. Ecological

(1) A more recent "discovery"

(2) We are part of nature and therefore interdependent

(3) Need to redo our theological bias of domination,

(4) and consider instead one of stewardship.

e. We will address this whole area in greater depth when we consider Christian anthropology.

4. Human reason, etc.

5. Law, normativity, etc. and their function in human society

6. The world

a. Basically good, positive, etc.

b. Evil, sinful, dangerous, impure, etc.

E. Thus, involving the Hermeneutic Dimension,

1. suffice to recall that basically "hermeneutics" involves a "practical interpretation"

a. i.e., an interpretation which is personal: this text has this meaning for me/us, etc.

b. and which at the same time is practical, it leads me/us to apply this interpretation to our lives.

2. Contribution here of James Gustafson

a. American Protestant ethician

b. Student of H. Richard Niebuhr at Yale

c. Important teacher of many contemporary moralists, including

(1) Lisa Sowle Cahill

(2) William Costelloe Spohn, S.J.

3. Such an interpretation in turn, according to James Gustafson, is usually structured

4. around some central "organizing concept, idea, principle, analogy, metaphor, or symbol

5. around which the [4] base points are organized." [Gustafson, Theocentric Ethics, v. 2, p. 143]

F. According to Gustafson, "The [4] base points are

1. "(a) the interpretation of God and God's relations to the world and particularly to human beings, and the interpretation of God's purposes;

2. "(b) the interpretation of the meaning or significance of human experience--of historical life of the human community, of events and circumstances in which persons and collectivities act, and of nature and man's participation in it;

3. "(c) the interpretation of persons and collectivities as moral agents, and of their acts; and

4. "(d) the interpretation of how persons and collectivities ought to make moral choices and ought to judge their own acts, those of others, and states of affairs in the world. [Gustafson, Theocentric Ethics, v. 2, p. 143]

G. This basic process of judgment will also be conditioned by one's basic worldview (in Lonergan's sense), either classicist or historicist

1. We will discuss these worldviews in greater detail when we consider the "paradigm shift" in moral theology, but for now it is sufficient to note that these different worldviews basically concern

a. The notion of relative change and stability in the world,

b. and especially how this relates to the knowledge of human nature,

c. and the ability to predicate a universal natural law applicable to

(1) all men and women

(2) in every conceivable situation, irrespective of culture and/or circumstance

(3) and transhistorical, therefore valid for all times.

2. The classicist or historicist worldview will manifest marked differences in apprehension over

a. the meaning of human person/community

b. understanding of the "good"

c. Role of the Christian community of the Church in the world

3. These differences will seriously condition the use and interpretation of the theological sources,

a. such as Scripture

b. Tradition,

c. Magisterial teachings, etc.

H. James Gustafson also highlights different basic types of judgment on the sources of theological ethics, and identifies four:

1. "(a) which sources are relevant, and why;

2. "(b) which sources are decisive when they conflict [or seem to conflict], and why;

3. "(c) what specific `content' is to be used from these // sources, and what is to be ignored or rejected, and why; and

4. "(d) how this content is to be interpreted, and why." [Gustafson, Theocentric Ethics, v. 2, pp. 143-144].

I. Potential weakness of an overly strong "organizing" concept

1. May be too restrictive or narrow

2. May not adequately reflect the range of diversity of human moral experience

3. Not allow each and every voice in the various languages to be raised and heard

4. May skew some of the information

5. Thus, the difference between an "organizing" concept and a "domineering" or "dominating" concept.

J. A "Non-Model" would be one which denied or totally eclipsed the function of one of the 4 sectors

1. Magisterial positivism

2. Moral skepticism/nihilism

3. Karma/Fate

III. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF INITIAL DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT ETHICS

A. Bibliographical notes on history of moral theology

1. From the Protestant Perspective:

a. Beach, Waldo, and Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christian Ethics: Sources of the Living Tradition. 2nd Ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

b. White, R.E.O. The Changing Continuity of Christian Ethics. Volume 2: The Insights of History. Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1981.

(a) Volume 1, published in 1979, is on Biblical Ethics.

(b) The Second Volume is a history of Christian ethics, in the Protestant perspective, from the time of Christ up to the present.

c. J. Philip Wogaman, Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.

2. On Catholic moral theology

a. Mahoney, John, S.J. The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition. The Martin D'Arcy Memorial Lectures, 1981-2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

Treats the development of moral theology from a thematic perspective.

b. Gallagher, John A. Time Past, Time Future: An Historical Study of Catholic Moral Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1990.

Treats particularly the history of moral theology as it moved from the neo-Scholasticism and neo-Thomism of the manualist tradition through Conciliar and post-Conciliar developments.

B. Bibliographical notes: Protestant specialized

1. Paul Althaus, The Ethics of Martin Luther. Translated, with a Foreword by Robert C. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress Press,1972.

a. A quite readable account of basic Lutheran ethics, with ample footnotes given to primary sources.

b. Althaus lived from 1888 to 1966.

2. Carl Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

a. Concise and readable exposition of the main aspects of Lutheran theology in the contemporary world.

b. Chapter 6 deals with the Lutheran understanding of Law and Gospel, and

c. Chapter 7 seeks to delineate an ecumenical theology of human rights in the context of the Two Kingdoms Principle.

C. Historical Background

1. NOT a major focus of this course!

2. State of the Church

a. Indulgence controversy, symptom of

b. Greater malaise, and perhaps indication of real cultural differences which were beginning to appear as cracks in the unity of Christendom.

c. Read Luther's 95 Theses once!

3. Scholasticism and scholastic methodology

D. Post-Reformation Developments in Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, vis-a-vis moral theology or Christian ethics

1. Contrast on function of writings in moral theology:

a. "The ecclesiastical function of writings in ethics or moral theology has been radically different in the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions.

b. "Failure to recognize that Catholic moral theology developed in the service of the priestly role in the sacrament of penance has led to a great deal of misunderstanding and to misplaced criticisms by Protestant theologians." [Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement, p. 1].

c. Genre of the Roman Catholic moral theology manual

(1) Context of the seminary course

(2) Close connection with canon law,

(3) rather divorced from dogmatic theology,

(4) with goal of training penitential judges.

(5) Therefore, a rather legalistic model developed:

(a) Sin as crime

(b) Penance as punishment

(6) Helpful book of John A. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future: An Historical Study of Catholic Moral Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1990.

2. Traditional Protestant theology

a. "Law, on the whole, has not had a similar centrality in Protestant history.

b. "Consequently, seldom in Protestant church life has such a juridical role existed." [Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics, p. 3].

c. Not a distinct special field of moral theology.

E. Martin Luther

1. Here, as with Calvin which follows, just a brief introduction and mention of some key themes. More in-depth treatment later.

2. Biographical background to Luther's theology

a. Augustinian monk

b. Troubled by scruples, frequent and long confessions (up to six hours!)

c. Luther found relief for his scruples, "when, in meditating on the `righteousness' or `justice' of God,

(1) which he understood as the quality of God by which God condemned the sinner,

(2) it came to him that righteousness was rather the quality by which God invited sinners to be forgiven.

(3) The words of St. Paul in Romans 1:17 took on new meaning, `The upright man finds life through faith'." [Keeling, Foundations, p. 128]

3. Sola fide

a. Faith alone justifies, saves

b. I.e., in a personal encounter with

c. the historical Jesus, who is the Christ,

d. in the living Word of God,

e. which saves by the very fact of its being preached. ("Protestantism" in Rahner/Vorgrimmler's Theological Dictionary, p. 384).

f. Parenthetically, the reason for the strong Evangelical stress on the physical preaching of the Gospel (Model of the Church as Herald).

4. Sola scriptura

a. What is the authority of Scripture for ethics?

b. How is Scripture relevant to, or applied to, practical moral matters?

c. "It remains fair to say, however, that a major difference in the two traditions historically has been in the place of Scripture in ethical thought. Indeed, this has been the major difference." [Gustafson, Protestant & R.C. Ethics, p. 29]

F. John Calvin

1. Institutes on Christian Religion

2. Reformed Tradition

a. Puritans

b. Congregationalists

3. Will discuss Calvin at greater length later

G. Anabaptists and "Radical" Reformers

1. Meaning of the terms "Anabaptist" and "Radical" reformers

2. Contemporary descendents

a. Baptists

b. Quakers

c. Mennonites, Amish

3. Notion of church and relation to Christian ethics

4. We will not discuss Anabaptist tradition in any length.

5. Importance of the Work of John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas

H. Anglican Tradition

1. Richard Hooker's Law of Ecclesiastical Polity

a. Sought a via media between Puritan biblicism and excessive individualism on one hand, and

b. the warrant of papal authority on the other.

2. Synthesis of three basic elements

a. Authority of the Bible

b. Church Tradition

c. Human Reason, Natural Law

3. John Macquarrie's essay on the natural law is a good example of this approach, and we will examine it in greater depth later.

I. Orthodox Tradition

1. Will not be treated in this course

2. See bibliography for some initial leads in case someone should wish to follow this tradition further.

IV. OVERVIEW OF SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY

A. Images of God

1. Creator

2. Governor

3. Sustainer

4. Redeemer

B. Christology

1. Jesus as Lord and Redeemer:

2. Jesus Christ as sole, unique, personal Savior

3. Absolute obedience to Jesus as pre-eminent moral duty

C. Theological anthropology

1. Need to investigate this in a bit greater depth, since here we begin to see some greater divergences

a. Based on the interpretation of the above images of God, Christ, etc.

b. With ramifications for fundamental moral theology as well as practical moral reasoning.

c. Remember to keep in the background our own understanding of theological anthropology, i.e., who the human person is in the eyes of God.

d. Now move on to some traditional Protestant "labels" to describe the human person in relation to

(1) him/herself

(2) the human community, society

(3) God and Christ

2. simul justus et peccator

a. At the same time the human is both a sinner and justified: i.e., the sinfulness which remains after baptism

b. A theological oxymoron?

c. Traditional nexus of disagreement between Roman Catholics and Protestants, especially in reference free moral human acts: (Read from Dictionary of Moral Theology):

(1) "Assuredly Protestants do speak of free human acts, but present points difficult to understand.

(a) How can such acts be called free by those who deny free will (Lutherans)?

(b) How can sinful acts be avoided and virtuous acts performed by those who believe that, before attaining justifying faith (trust), all of man's acts are sinful (Lutherans and others)?

(c) How can virtuous acts performed by man after justification (in the Protestant sense) be a means to the attainment of his supernatural end, if they are not meritorious (nearly all Protestants)?

(d) How can some be predestined by God to eternal punishment (Calvisnits)?

(2) Taken from "Protestantism (moral theology of)" by R.P. Camillo Crivelli, S.J. (Associate Editor of La Civiltà Cattolica) in Dictionary of Moral Theology (London: Burns & Oates, 1962), (translation of Dizionario di Teologia Morale (Roma: Editrice Studium, 1957).

d. Yet, for Protestant moral theology this concept is a sort of discrimen, a theological horizon against which many of the other aspects of their Christian ethics must be seen.

3. Orders of Creation (Stations of Life)

a. Will be discussed in greater length later

b. Three basic stations:

(1) "...ministry,

(2) marriage (or the family, including everything related to business and the economy), and

(3) secular authority." [Althaus, p. 36].

c. Reaction to Natural Law Theory

d. "The Lutheran theology of the orders of creation was an attempt to overcome the latent deism in natural law theory by deriving law from the doctrine of God the Creator, hence not lex naturae but lex creationis!" Carl E. Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), p. 129.

e. "Human beings exist within certain orders of creation such as marriage, family, state, and the like." Braaten, Principles, p. 129.

D. Justification and Faith

1. A central principle of Lutheran ethics, however, one needs to understand the twin concepts of faith and justification,

2. their theological grounding, and subsequent relation to human life and living.

3. Via negativa: Justification is NOT

a. wiping away of all guilt (as opposed to sin),

b. nor is it unconditional forgiveness of any and all sin, in the sense of indifference or overlooking.

4. Via positiva

a. See Justification as a hermeneutical principle,

b. as an attempt to penetrate the mystery of God's love and universal saving will.

5. Justification by Faith vs. Justification by works

a. Traditional Protestant critique of Roman Catholic theology

b. Only a heresy in Lutheran eyes?

c. Catholic apprehension of Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism?

d. Summary position of the Augsburg Confession:

"Good works must happen, not for merit before God, but his praise. They are never a condition for justification; rather, they are the natural result of a grateful heart filled with the power of faith in the God who loves the ungodly." [Gritsch & Jenson, p. 140].

E. Sin, Repentance and Sacramental Penance

1. "During the period of the Reformation, Luther retained the sacramental nature of absolution, whereas Calvin rejected it.

2. "Luther explicitly accepted the three sacraments in his early writing: baptism, the eucharist, and penance.

3. "Nonetheless, he later hesitated to confirm the sacramental character of penance, regarding it is as a return to baptism.

4. "To Calvin, penance was not a sacrament because its ceremony was not instituted by the Lord for the confirmation of our faith.

5. "Both Luther and Calvin criticized the three acts of penance--

a. contrition, confession, and satisfaction--

b. choosing instead to emphasize the doctrine of justification by faith through God's grace alone.

6. "For Luther, true contrition is impossible for a sinful human being.

7. "Only God's grace makes it possible.

8. "Calvin stressed that the Latin term poenitentia refers to both repentance and penance." ...

9. "Only through faith in Jesus Christ doe we come to repentance.

10. "While rejecting penance as a sacrament, Calvin supported voluntary private confession, which might be valuable for advice, compassion, and mutual comfort." [Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993): 88.

F. Grace

1. In this context, see Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, especially the first chapter.

2. Bonhoeffer's now classic twin concepts of "cheap" and "costly" grace.

3. Grace redeems, justifies, through faith in Jesus Christ,

4. Thus, renewing the human individual morally and spiritually,

5. Which process continues unfinished until death, and

6. Whose final consummation in glory will transpire at the moment of Jesus' Second Coming.

7. Controversial extremes in Protestantism:

a. Perfectionism

(1) Wesleyan 18th c. evangelical revival

(2) Possible to live a life of "entire sanctification" without sin, or at least without "known" or "deliberate" sin.

b. Antinomians ("No law")

(1) Under the grace of God, and

(2) Freed from the law in Christ,

(3) the Christian is no longer under any obligation to keep the law of God,

(4) extreme of laxism, and/or

(5) rejection of deontology in Christian life,

(6) thus, modern situation ethics can be seen in this light.

8. Notion of "common grace" of God

a. which is seen to operate in culture and society at large.

b. to restrain sinful tendencies, and

c. enable human institutions, such as the family, government, and church life to proceed.

d. Historical proponent: Dutch Calvinist Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920).

e. Some obvious similarity here to the concept of the natural law.

G. Revelation

1. Nature of Revelation

2. Internal dialectic between Reason on one side and Revelation and Faith on the other.

a. Protestant understanding of Fides quaerens intellectum

b. Note especially spectrum contemporary positions, such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, etc.

c. Here the question of the proprium of Christian ethics will come into sharper focus.

3. Importance of Scripture

4. Approaches to Scripture

5. Fundamentalism and Biblicism

a. Theological Problem of fideism

b. Kathleen C. Boone, The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989.

(1) Discusses how fundamentalists perceive the Bible as their only authority,

(2) maintaining at the same time that fundamentalism is not anti-intellectual as such, but rather an intellectual movement of a very particular type.

c. Norman J. Cohen, ed. The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: A View from Within, A Response from Without. Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans, 1990.

6. Methodology for use of Scripture in Christian ethics

a. William C. Spohn, S.J. What Are They Saying About Scripture and Ethics?. New York: Paulist Press, 1984.

b. James Gustafson, "The Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics: A Methodological Study," in Charles Curran & Richard McCormick, Readings in Moral Theology No. 4: The Use of Scripture in Moral Theology, (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), pp. 151-177.

c. My own essay in the binder for TS 2113

H. Sanctification

1. Condition of life of the Christian who is justified

2. Individual and communal vocation

a. Communal:

(1) 2 Tim 1:9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life-- not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,

(2) cf. 1 Pt 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

(3) Eph. 1:4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

b. Individual

(1) Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the individual Christian will be reminded of the ethics of Christian living,

(2) 1 Pet 1:15-16 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."

(3) Heb 12:14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

(4) Col 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

(5) Eph 5:3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.

I. Eschatology

1. An absolutely key theme for understanding Christian ethics

2. Bibliographical Notes

a. Possible final paper topic or exam theme

b. Joachim Jeremias, The Sermon on the Mount. Facet Books Biblical Series, no. 2. Translated by Norman Perrin. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963.

(1) Die Bergpredigt. Calwer Hefte, no. 27. Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1959.

(2) En français: Paroles de Jésus: La Sermon sur la montagne, le Notre-Père dans l'exégèse actuelle. Lectio Divina, 38. Traduction de Dom Marie Mailhé, O.S.B. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1963.

c. Carl E. Braaten, Eschatology and Ethics: Essays on the Theology and Ethics of the Kingdom of God. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1974.

3. Life in the hope of the Resurrection

4. New Creation

5. Kingdom of God and Christ's Second Coming

6. Already/Not Yet Tension: Expectation and fulfillment

7. Kingdom Values

8. Role of the Holy Spirit

V. RELATION OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY TO PROTESTANT ETHICS

A. Ethical Relationship of Justification and Faith

1. Opening 2 sentences of Paul Althaus' The Ethics of Martin Luther:

2. "Luther's ethics is determined in its entirety, in its starting point and all its main features, by the heart and the center of his theology, namely, by the justification of the sinner through the grace that is shown in Jesus Christ and received through faith alone. Justification by faith determines Christian ethics because, for the Christian, justification is both the presupposition and the source of the ethical life." [Althaus, p. 3]

3. Justification as the Presupposition of all Christian Activity

a. "Everything the Christian does presupposes that he is justified.

b. "Justification determines the Christian ethos because it governs the Christian's understanding of what the Christian life is about.

c. "It does this in two ways: negatively, by what it rules out, and positively, by what it affirms." [Althaus, p. 3].

d. "God wants to bestow salvation as a free act of his own sovereign mercy in Christ. No other way of salvation would allow God to be God!" [Althaus, p. 4].

e. "Thus, what I do can never be understood teleologically, that is as though it had the purpose of winning salvation." [Althaus, p. 4].

f. "We can relate to God only through faith, never through our own accomplishments." [Althaus, p. 4].

g. "Christian behavior, therefore, however imperfect and sinful it may be in an of itself, is good because it is grounded in the assurance of a prior `yes', in that divine approval which the Christian does not have to seek because it has already been given.

h. "This is why the Christian can go ahead and act in confidence and joy, even though his works are still impure and imperfect." [Althaus, p. 6].

i. "Thus the ethical substance and their moral correctness are not enough in God's judgment." [Althause, p. 8].

4. Justification as the Source of All Christian Activity

a. "Justification is a completely new kind of encounter between God and man. God now encounters man in his real nature to God.

b. " ...And as long as a man deals only with the God of the law and his ethical demands, he does not see and experience the true nature of God." [Althaus, p. 11].

c. "For Luther, our love of God and our love of our neighbor cannot be separated.

d. "Luther emphasizes that we must experience God's love for us before we can seriously love our brother; but he also emphasizes that our experience of God's love necessarily results in our loving our brother.

e. "Luther uses the picture of a water fountain or a water pipe to describe this relationship between the love which we have experienced from God and our love of the neighbor: God's love flows into us and then flows out again to our neighbor." [Althaus, p. 14].

B. Paradigm of Christian Obedience

1. Central attitude and response of the believer who is justified by faith.

2. What would be traditional Roman Catholic "paradigms" for morality?

3. In this context, read the "CORE" reading from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The Commandment of God," in his Ethics, 277-285.

C. Positive Relation between Faith and Works

1. "Works must also be done with the right religious attitude. They must be theologically as well as ethically correct,"

2. Here we note a key difference in nuance between traditional Roman Catholic and Protestant theology.

3. "that is, they must be done in the certainty of salvation and with the confidence that God graciously accepts them as valid, just as he accepts the man who does them.

4. "This faith is indispensable. A work may be very ethical in terms of its substance even though it is done in unfaith; if so, it is sin in God's judgment (Romans 14:23).

5. "Viewed in terms of simple morality, the non-Christian can do everything the Christian does." [Althaus, p. 8].

6. "For Luther, the exercise of faith in practical life is to be understood in a twofold sense.

a. "It is both an expression of the Christian's faith before the world and

b. a matter of training whereby that faith is strengthened." [Althaus, p. 17].

7. "Faith that is exercised thus becomes certain of itself in a twofold sense.

a. "First the practice of works is the test of faith. Our works show that we have faith and thereby make us certain both that we have faith and that we are saved. Luther repeatedly asserted this on the basis of 2 Peter 1:10.

b. "Second, such exercise also trains faith. As faith is realized in the concrete situations of life it becomes stronger, increases and grows.

8. "Since faith is the central element in being a Christian, everything depends on the strengthening of faith." [Althaus, p. 18].

D. Christian Life as a Struggle with the Individual Person

1. "Through faith the justified man becomes a new man. The Spirit of God moves him.

2. "However, faith does not transform the whole person all at once. The old nature with its desires is not yet completely put to death.

3. "Thus the Christian is still divided within himself.

a. "Luther understands Romans 7 as a lamentation over this split in the life of the Christian.

b. "This split is not to be confused with the twofold character of the Christian simul justus et peccator, at one and the same time a righteous man and a sinner.

c. "Luther uses simul justus et peccator to describe the whole man in the judgment of God at any given time:

(1) in and of myself I am and remain throughout my whole life a sinner before God;

(2) yet through God's gracious act of justification, I, the sinner, am now righteous." [Althaus, p. 19].

E. The Two Kingdoms Principle

1. Historically important for the development of Protestant political theology

2. Conflict between the Two Kingdoms

a. "Humanity is divided into believers and unbelievers, each group forming a corpus, which is not visible as such in society.

b. Both groups are subject to a head--the one kingdom is subject to Christ

c. while the other, in the phrase that Luther himself frequently used, is a kingdom of the Evil One, a corpus diaboli. [Johannes van Laarhoven, "Luther's Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms--Notes on its Origin." Concilium 7 (2/1966): 27]

d. Thus, "There are two kingdoms in conflict: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan." [Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology, p. 133]

e. "The two kingdoms are at war with each other until the final victory of Christ, who then hands his kingdom over to the Father.

f. "This, then, is the fundamental significance of the doctrine of the two kingdoms." [Laarhoven, "Luther's Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms p. 27.]

3. Role of Jesus Christ

a. "...The broad backdrop of the gospel picture of Jesus as the Christ features the power of God against the powers of evil at work in the whole of creation.

b. Jesus brings the power of God's rule into history, confronts the demonic forces, and wins a victory which spells ultimate freedom for human beings." [Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology p. 133].

4. Role of Satan

a. "The cunning of the Evil One consists in allowing the members of his kingdom to be tempted to appropriate the spiritual kingdom;

b. at the same time, the members of the spiritual kingdom are tempted to conquer the worldly kingdom, that is, to lay a claim to the dominion of the world.

c. "This double cunning gives rise to confusio, the confusion of both kingdoms, through which God's double activity is obscured and thwarted.

d. Papists, baptists and all fanatics (Schwärmer) try, each in his own way, to compel the world by so-called spiritual means, and many princes misuse their worldly power for spiritual affairs.

e. "The attempts of both groups are instigated by the devil." [Laarhoven, "Luther's Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, p. 28.]

5. Position of the Christian believers

a. Though as believers we live in God's spiritual kingdom, at the same time, "we live, under God's worldly regiment, subject to the laws and ordinances of the worldly kingdom.

b. "But the Christian knows this, and that is the great difference between him and his fellow members who do not believe.

c. "He will therefore behave in the worldly kingdom as the doer of God's will and must appear coram hominibus." [Laarhoven, "Luther's Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms p. 28]

6. God rules in 2 ways; the "Two Hands" of God

a. Left Hand of God

(1) "Luther spoke of `the two hands of God.' The `left hand of God' is a formula //meaning that God is universally at work in human life through structures and principles commonly operative in political, economic, and cultural institutions that affect the life of all.

(2) "The struggle for human rights occurs within this realm of divine activity.

(3) "However, no matter how much peace and justice and liberty are experienced in these common structures of life, they do not mediate `the one things needful'.

b. "This is the function of the gospel of God in Jesus Christ, the work of the `right hand of God'." [Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology, pp. 133-135].

7. Positive value of secular government

a. Established by God; do NOT identify secular government as the Kingdom of Satan!

b. "Both governments have been established by one and the same God. Even insofar as secular government exists because of sin, it still does not have its source in sin and is not a city of the devil; rather, it is a divine institution." [Althaus, p. 54].

c. "This secular government serves to preserve external secular righteousness; it thus also preserves this physical, earthly, temporal life and thereby preserves the world." [Althaus, p. 45].

8. Relation of spiritual government

a. "The spiritual government helps men to achieve true Christian righteousness and therewith eternal life; it thus serves the redemption of the world.

b. "God provides secular government throughout the whole world even among the heathen and the godless; but he gives his spiritual government only to his people.

c. "This spiritual government brings the kingdom of God into being. This is `the kingdom of grace'." [Althaus, p. 45].

F. Luther's Understanding of Law

1. Civil use of law, maintenance of order:

a. "There is the civil use by which the law, with its threat of punishment, acts as a restraint on sin.

b. But though this is for Luther a very necessary function of the law, it is not its most important." [Andrew Bandstra, "Paul and the Law: Some Recent Developments and an Extraordinary Book." Calvin Theological Journal 25 (1990): 249]

2. "Teacher of sin"

a. "The law's primary and absolute function is as a `teacher of sin' acting as a `mighty hammer'

b. to break down all human self-righteousness and thus preparing the sinner to receive divine grace." [Bandstra, p. 249]

G. Calvin's "Third Use" of the Law

1. "Calvin agreed with Luther on these two uses of the law, though his perspective on the law as a teacher of sin was somewhat different. What for Luther the law is `a mighty hammer', for Calvin it is `a mirror'. [Bandstra p. 249].

2. "For Luther the law as a teacher of sin is its //principal function; not so for Calvin. [Bandstra pp. 249-250].

3. "Moreover, Calvin spoke of a third use of the law, and he regarded this third use as its principal function, corresponding to its proper purpose--namely, to inform believers as to the will of God and to exhort believers to obedience. [Bandstra p. 250].

4. "Luther probably never admitted such a positive use of the Mosaic law, though he acknowledged it did contain examples of outstanding laws and moral precepts." [Bandstra p. 250].

H. Luther's Understanding of the Law and Gospel dichotomy

1. "Luther divided the entire Bible into law and gospel (commands and promise) and

2. found some of each in both Old and New Testaments.

3. ...Nevertheless, since the believer is both justified and a sinner (simul justus et peccator), the law as a teacher of sin continues to work against the unconquered flesh of the Christian." [Bandstra, p. 250]

4. "The Lutheran concern has been for a clear differentiation between law and gospel as two modes of divine activity in the world. The two-kingdoms doctrine is an expression of this distinction." , [Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology, p. 130].

I. Calvin's Understanding of the Law and Gospel

1. "For Calvin, the dichotomy between law and gospel is not so sharp--except in one area.

2. "He perceived a sharp dichotomy or antithesis between what he called the `bare law' and the gospel.

3. "By the `bare law' Calvin meant the law separated from the covenant of grace--the law that makes demands, promises blessing only on the condition of obedience, and threatens a curse upon disobedience.

4. "Between this `bare law' and the gospel, there is indeed, he held, an antithesis.

5. "But the law as `bare law' has been abrogated for the believer in Christ, and his conscience is freed from the law's curse." [Bandstra, p. 250].

6. Calvin's theonomous ethics:

a. "The proper actions are those that are governed by the divine law.

b. "The divine law is present in the natural ordering of things, and thus action is to be in accordance with the natural law.

c. "The moral law of the Bible is not different from the law of nature.

d. "The inward law that is engraved on our hearts (the conscience) `in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the two Tables'.

e. "Because our consciences can err in perceiving the natural law, `the Lord has provided us with a written law to give us a clearer witness of what was too obscure in the natural law, shake off our listlessness, and strike more vigorously our mind and memory'. [Calvin, Institutes II, 8, 1: 1:368]

f. "This is no ethics of autonomy. Actions are to conform to // God's will, and

g. since God's providence is omnipotent, there are no spheres of human action that are outside the divine governance and purpose." [Gustafson, Theology and Ethics. Volume 1 of Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, pp. 166-167].

h. We will have a bit more to say on Calvin's approach to the natural law when we take that theme specifically a bit later in the course.

J. Dichotomies of Law & Gospel and the Two Kingdoms:

1. Distinction, but not absolute separation, i.e., a dichotomy between Law and Gospel and between the Two Kingdoms:

2. "It is essential to Christian faith to make the right distinction between law and gospel and between the two kingdoms.

3. "... But distinction does not mean separation. The two kingdoms are not spheres that can be separated but dimensions to be distinguished.

4. "There is no political sphere alongside a spiritual sphere. The two kingdoms must not be confused with the modern idea of church and state.

5. "The cosmic struggle between the divine and the satanic forces penetrates every dimension of human life, including the religious.

6. "The twofold involvement of God means that, on the one hand, he works creatively to promote what is good for human life in all its personal and social dimensions, and,

7. "on the other hand, he works redemptively to bring the world forward to that final perfection summed up in Christ." [Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology, p. 134].

K. The Natural Law

1. Avoid simplistic expression

2. Requirements for a Natural Law Theory: Every natural law theory "would have to show two things, at the very least, about the everyday world:

a. (1) that it is possible to establish a set of empirical generalizations about human nature that is constant, both spatially (cross-culturally) and temporally (historically);

b. (2) that it is possible to move from this set of prescriptions regarding how they ought to act." [David Little, "Calvin and the Prospects for a Christian Theory of Natural Law," in Norm and Context in Christian Ethics, ed. by Gene H. Outka and Paul Ramsey, (London: SCM Press, 1968), p. 176.

3. In addition a Christian theory of natural law would have to add two other elements or aspects:

a. (3) he must be able to show on what ground and in what sense human nature, though corrupted by sin, is still a reliable moral guide independent of Christian obligation; and

b. (4) he must be able to relate his generalizations about natural moral obligation to Christian belief and obligation." [David Little, "Calvin and the Prospects.., p. 176].

4. Can speak of a Natural Law as a good thing and God's gift "because God has implanted it // into human reason through his act of creation. Thus law is simultaneously human and divine, for it both is contained in human reason and at the same time expresses divine wisdom." [Althaus, pp. 132-133].

5. To be discussed in depth later

L. The Orders of Creation

1. Recall the Three basic stations:

a. "...ministry,

b. marriage (or the family, including everything related to business and the economy), and

c. secular authority." [Althaus, p. 36].

2. "Masks of God":

a. Luther, from Lectures on Galatians in Jaroslav Pelikan's Luther's Works, 26:95:

b. "Thus the magistrate, the emperor, the king, the prince, the teacher, the preacher, the pupil, the father, the mother, the children, the master, the servant--all these are social positions or external masks.

c. "God wants us to respect and acknowledge them as His creatures, which are the necessity for this life."

d. Gustafson's comment: "They are, however, only masks, nad not to be confused with God." [Theocentric Ethics, v. 2, p. 286 {ft. 5}]

3. "The Lutheran theology of the orders of creation was an attempt to overcome the latent deism in natural law theory by deriving law from the doctrine of God the Creator, hence not lex naturae but lex creationis!" [Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology, p. 129].

4. "Human beings exist within certain orders of creation such as marriage, family, state, and the like.

5. Criticism of "Orders of Creation" Approach

a. "However, just as natural law theory was criticized for its unhistorical character, so also the idea of the orders of creation became subjected to the same criticism." Braaten, Principles, p. 129.

b. Hence, Wolfhart Pannenberg could raise this question: `Are there really orders which uniformly underlie all social forms that have arisen in history and of which the historical forms are only variations? Does not every social form bear through and through the mark of history?'" ("Zur Theologie des Rechts." Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik 7 (1963), pp. 3-4. [Quoted in Braaten, Principles, p. 129.])

c. Also severely criticized by Karl Barth

(1) "as an autonomous locus of theology completely separate from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ." Braaten, Principles, p. 130.

(2) "The chief concern of Karl Barth is the confession of the universal lordship of Jesus Christ." Braaten, Principles, p. 130.

6. Emil Brunner's (1889-1966) creative re-interpretation of this doctine:

a. Thoughts from his 1943 Justice and the Social Order, (English translation: London: Lutterworth Press, 1945):

b. "`The order of creation as the principle of all justice alone allows us to understand why both our common manhood and our single individuality contain something that in all justice must be recognized--

c. "a claim, a right whose recognition constitutes justice. If we bypass the order of creation we shall find no relation between the norm of justice and the identity of the creature.'" [Wenzel Lohff, "Emil Brunner," In Theologians of Our Time, ed. Leonhard Reinisch, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), p. 50.

d. "Here Brunner as brought out something that is, after all, analogous to the old law of nature: an original order to which all human thought can turn as to a final source of justice.

e. "It differs from the old natural law in that it is within the province of faith.

f. "And since faith in creation achieves full clarity only through faith in Christ, this new natural law may be called `Christological',

g. "that is, a law which finds its only legitimate ground in the Christian // faith.

h. "And since, as Brunner has shown, the revelation of faith lays claim also to human reason, the new doctrine of Christological natural law is bound to demand that secular human reason, in its search for the order of justice, be guided by faith." [Lohff, pp. 40-41].

i. Certain resonance to the approach of John Macquarrie, which will be discussed later.

VI. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 17th AND 18th CENTURIES

A. Enlightenment in Europe (mid 17th--18th centuries)

1. Can hardly discuss this movement, even briefly

2. However, for our purposes it is sufficient to highlight the "break"

a. which occurred between religion and ethics,

b. breakup of medieval scholastic synthesis

3. "Emerging sciences exposed previous beliefs about the cosmos as false,

4. and therefore suggested that true knowledge comes by way of reasoned investigation rather than authoritative tradition." [Douglas Ottati, "Between Foundationalism and Nonfoundationalism." Affirmation 4 (Fall, 1991): 29.]

5. Many different forms:

a. British empiricism (Hume)

b. French positivism (Voltaire)

c. German idealism (Lessing and Kant)

B. Immanuel Kant, (1724-1804)

1. "Immanuel Kant insisted that the way of traditional authority is also prejudicial to the cause of practice reason,

a. and he therefore attempted to show that the sure foundation for moral judgment is accessible to all.

b. "For Kant, enlightenment means the emergence of humanity from an immature inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from another." [Ottati, Foundationalism, p. 29.]

2. Thus, Kant speaks of the movement of the human person out of the "minority state,"

a. which means "the incapacity to make use of one's understanding without the guidance of another.

b. ...Sapere aude! Have the courage to make use of your own understanding--is thus the motto of Enlightenment [Aufklärung]." (From Kant's 1784 essay, "What is Enlightenment?")

3. Autonomy of rational self-consciousness:

a. Human reason has the power to discover the truth about itself, the world, God, and

b. To live in accordance with this truth.

4. Since morality could not be founded in the objective nature of the world, Kant attempted to demonstrate its basis in the rational structure of duty.

5. Kant attempted to make a priori ethical judgments

a. i.e., judgments based upon the reason acting apart from any traditional authority, or experimental investigations.

b. "Act on the maxim that you could will to become a universal law."

c. Thus, "So act to treat all humans, whether yourself or another, in every case as an end in itself, and never as a means only.

d. This Kantian "Categorical Imperative" seen as a search for a new formulation of universal moral norm.

e. An attempt to provide an unassailable rational basis for making moral judgments,

f. Thus, making ethics autonomous, and

g. To begin with a rational ethic as the foundation for building religion.

6. Which search we will see as a fairly constant concern of ethicians and philosophers from that point on.

a. Tensions between religion and ethics

b. Place of religious authority

c. Kant on the Index for a long time.

C. Other developments, different from Kant, but in this same line of search for independent basis of ethics.

1. E.g., if morality was an element in subjective experience, then twentieth century moral philosophers sought to pinpoint it more precisely.

2. G.E. Moore (1873-1958) claimed that the `good' was a non-natural quality intuited by moral awareness.

3. Whole Anglo-American linguistic school.

D. Impact of the Enlightentment in brief:

1. "In sum, the Enlightenment aligned

a. reason,

b. participatory democracy,

c. and rational religion against

d. irrationality,

e. hierarchical authority,

f. and traditionalism.

2. A universalistic anxiety arose which alternatively

a. dimissed confessional theology as the fideistic survival of a bygone era

b. and feared it as the harbinger of authoritarian suppression." [Ottati, p. 30.]

E. Great Awakening in North America

1. Background of the original American Dream, i.e., to build the New Jerusalem in the New World

2. Manifestation of Protestant Political Theology

a. Version of "Perfect Society" model of the church

b. Cooperation between the Church and State, not separation, nor hierarchical ranking.

3. Revival movement, counterpoint to the Enlightenment

4. Legacy of men like Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and his theology of Religious Affections

a. "Affections were always part of distinctively Puritan piety. Religion was `experiential'." [Gustafson, Theocentric Ethics, vol. 1, p. 172].

b. "By `affections' Edwards meant `the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul'." p. 172

[Edwards Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1959), p. 59.

c. "Jonathan Edwards lists the biblical religious affections as fear, hope, love, hatred, desire, joy, sorrow, gratitude, compassion, and zeal." p. 197 [Edwards, Religious Affections, p. 102]

d. "For Edwards morality is corrected by piety, and piety would not be true apart from virtue actions which, to return to a key phrase, relate to all things in a manner appropriate to their relations to God." [Gustafson, vol. 1, p. 176].

5. Continuing legacy of Edwards in the work of theologians such as H. Richard Niebuhr, James Gustafson, and William Spohn.

VII. 19th CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS OF LIBERAL PROTESTANTISM

A. Historical Background

1. Liberalism and capitalism

a. Liberalism: belief in the supreme value of the individual and his/her freedom and rights.

b. Role of the State: to protect those rights and remove any obstacles to full liberty

c. Capitalism as economic theory wedded to liberalism

d. Laissez-faire economic policy

e. Utilitarian ethical theories (Mill, etc.) make their appearance.

f. Darwinism and Social Darwinism

(1) 1859 Charles Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species

(2) "Surival of the Fittest" theorem

(3) Transferred to society (Spencer et. al.)

2. Industrialization

a. Urbanization

b. Change of class structures

c. Intensification of social ills and consciousness thereof

d. Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth"

3. Enlightenment legacy: trust in human rational power

4. Scientific technology

B. Christian failures to deal with the Industrial Revolution

1. Not until the Social Gospel (to be treated shortly) will this important development begin to be addressed in any way by either Protestants or Catholics.

2. "In the rising tide of industrialism in the nineteenth century the necessary questions were asked not by Christian leaders but by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. [Keeling, Foundations of Christian Ethics, p. 170.]

3. Reasons for this overall failure:

a. "The first was that the industrial populations grew up outside the parochial systems which had served the pre-industrial populations." [Keeling, Foundations, p. 182.]

b. "Another reason was that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the attention of the churches shifted to mission overseas.

(1) European colonial expansion drew attention to the fact that the Gospel had not been effectively preached in vast areas of the world.

(2) The success of the missionary movement of the nineteenth century was immense,

(3) but it did tend to distraction from affairs at home." [Keeling, Foundations, p. 182.]

c. "But the most formidable reason of all was probably the moral one.

(1) Out of the combination of Calvinism and capitalism there emerged the `Protestant work ethic',

(2) which said in its crudest form that hard work and honest trading would necessarily lead to worldly success as a sign of the blessing of God." [Keeling, Foundations, p. 182.]

4. We need to keep these failures in mind as we look at how theology of the period developed, or failed to develop.

C. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

1. See Schleiermacher in historical continuity:

2. "The Renaissance and Reformation had challenged in radical ways the synthesis of faith and reason that had undergirded the moral vision of Thomas Aquinas and other medieval thinkers.

a. A wedge had been driven between faith and reason, and this sparked a hostile debate over the fundamental ground of morality."

[From the Introduction by John Shelley, p. 16 to Schleiermacher's Introduction to Christian Ethics. Translated by J. Shelley. Nashville: Abingdon, 1989.]

b. Therefore, Schleiermacher's view would be rejected out of hand by those who maintained the viability of the medieval synthesis.

3. Schleiermacher declared that the essence of religion is neither theology nor ethics.

a. Theology related to Glaubenslehre (faith instruction)

b. Ethics related to Sittenlehre (teachings on morals)

c. Religion neither essentially a way of knowing nor of acting, but rather a feeling of absolute dependence.

(1) Which feeling is common to both Judaism and Christianity,

(2) But in Christianity is seen in the

(a) consciousness of sin and

(b) redemption in union with Jesus Christ

d. This feeling of dependence is the particular spirit which shapes the members of the particular religous community.

4. Schleiermacher explained his thinking in refernce to dogmatic theology, in his monumental The Christian Faith, but he was never able to complete a companion on Christian ethics.

5. "Schleiermacher apparently regard the Protestant Orthodoxy of the early nineteenth century as a degenerate Protestantism, and

a. he firmly rejected both its insistence that morality assumes the form of law and

b. its claim that the content of Christian morality could be found in a list of biblical commandments.

6. "He based this rejection, however, on other Reformation principles,

a. especially justification by faith and its corollaries in `freedom from the law' and

b. the `universal priesthood of the believer'." [Shelly, p. 18].

7. In his The Christian Ethics Schleiermacher "declares that Christian ethics is fundamentally a descriptive discipline.

8. "What he means is that Christian ethics, founded on the Pauline notion of `freedom from the law', rejects the imperative as the primary form of ethical propositions.

9. "Rather, Christian ethics is properly concerned with the indicative, that is, with describing the distinguishing characteristics of the Christian life.

10. "The description is normative, even though it does not explicitly command or prescribe.

a. Here we see the development of a significantly different understanding of "norm" and "normativity."

b. Greater implicit emphasis on the role of moral development, character, community, etc.

11. "Schleiermacher continues to hold to the principle of sola scriptura, but for him the Bile is not a sourcebook for objectively revealed moral precepts.

a. "Rather it is a book that informs the Christian conscience and thus helps to shape the Christian's impulse to action.

b. "The individual whose conscience is informed by Scripture is finally his or her own judge in matters of morality." [Shelley, p. 18].

c. Roman Catholic evaluation of this last point?

12. Note here the "crisis of authority" which we now can see developing within Protestantism as well.

13. Schleiermacher's possible influence on contemporary Christian ethics

a. Attention to the role of the community, seen in people like Hauerwas

b. Use of Scripture in a more nuanced way for ethics

c. Emphasis on ethics as "descriptive," i.e., "indicative" rather than imperative is a chord which has a certain modern resonance.

D. Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923)

1. Troeltsch sought to present a comprehensive historical context for Christian social teaching and

2. to address the problem of reconciling the existence of absolute values with divergent and changing cultural orders (Kulturkreise).

3. "As Troeltsch saw it, historicism, or a historical way of thinking, is along with the natural sciences one of the two dominant features of the modern world.

4. "Just as we readily acknowledge the authority of the sciences in the understanding and control of natural processes, so we also interpret and evaluate social and cultural phenomena, or for that matter all human thought and behavior, in light of the process of their development out of the past.

5. "Therefore, just as Christian faith has had to find some way of relating itself to the new scientific cosmology in order to remain intelligible to modern man, so it must also come to grips with the problems and questions raised by historical thinking."

Thomas W. Ogletree, Christian Faith and History: A Critical Comparison of Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth, (New York: Abingdon, 1965), p. 20.

6. Troeltsch's Analytical Approach: 4 points

a. "First, what is the nature of history and how has modern historical thinking conditioned this understanding?

b. "Second, how does this conception of history provide a foundation for finding normative values in history and what is the character of such values?" [Ogletree, p. 21]

(1) This question involves Troeltsch's "criticism of the idea of the absolute, and

(2) "his interpretation of the relation between the absolute and the relative in history.

c. "Third, by what method can normative values be formulated for the present in relation to this historical foundation?

(1) This question considers the "understanding of the relation between the past and the present in concrete construction of values." [Ogletree, p. 21]

d. Fourth question: what are the implications of this historical perspective for an "inquiry into the life of Jesus for an interpretation of Christ." p. 21.

E. Meaning of "Liberal" Orthodoxy

1. Reaction against "strict" Protestant "Orthodoxy"

2. Important to understand this label, in order to comprehend the sweep of history, and especially the following movement of "Neo-Orthodoxy"

3. Relation here to contemporary intellectual discussions on

a. The historical Jesus

b. Modernism and different paths taken by Protestantism and Roman Catholicism at this juncture.

(1) Cf. Pope Pius X's two encyclicals of 1907

(a) Lamentabili [DS 3401-3466]

(b) Pascendi [DS 3475-3500]

(2) 1910 "Oath Against Modernism" [DS 3537-3550]

4. Possible lead for further research: Ogletree's book: Christian Faith and History: A Critical Comparison of Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth. New York: Abingdon, 1965.

VIII. SOCIAL GOSPEL MOVEMENT

A. American Protestant Religious Background

1. Mention made by Stanley Hauerwas in his essay, "On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological." Chapter 2 in Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy, 16-42. Edited by Stanley M. Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

2. Hauerwas treats the Social Gospel movement in the context of an overview of Protestant ethics in the United States from roughly the late 19th century up to the present.

3. Good time to read this essay, if have not already done so.

4. New World, New Jerusalem mentality.

5. Manifest Destiny: American brand of imperialism.

6. Progressive era in American politics

7. Example of Charles Sheldon's religious novel, In His Steps. Chicago: Advance Publications, 1897; New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1935; Chicago: Moody Press, 1956.

a. Classic religious novel of the American Protestant Social Gospel movement at the turn of the century.

b. The novel's plot concerns a group of Christians who decide to make all the daily practical decisions of their life according to the sole criterion, "What would Jesus do in this case?"

c. This work had immediate and widespread success, and was translated in numerous languages.

d. It remains an excellent means of comprehending the mentality behind the Social Gospel movement.

B. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918)

1. Rauschenbusch served for eleven years as the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in the infamous "Hell's Kitchen" immigrant slum district of New York City.

2. This experience led him to criticize the prevailing attitudes of the American Protestant Churches towards the urban poor, and to formulate a theology of Christian social action which has made his reputation as the chief theologian of the Social Gospel movement.

3. Rauschenbusch's key ideas were that the concept of the Kingdom of God fostered an understanding social transformation and economic betterment as the purpose of the Church, and

4. a further belief that the institutions of a just social order can be deduced from the teachings of Jesus Christ.

5. "Rauschenbusch extended the concept of sin from the personal to the collective,

a. the `supra-personal forces' of

(1) city councils,

(2) police forces,

(3) trade unions,

(4) industrial companies

(5) and national states.

b. These collectivities had the potential to constitute either the Kingdom of Evil or the Kingdom of God.

6. Personal salvation remained an important part of the gospel, but the test of true individual conversion was conversion to others." [Michael Keeling, The Foundations of Christian Ethics, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990): 2.

7. Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis, (New York: Macmillan, 1907).

a. After a long historical study of the social aspects of religion from the Old Testament prophets through the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament and the experience of the early Church,

b. Rauschenbusch turns to an analaysis of his own time in three key chapters: "The Present Crisis," "The Stake of the Church in the Social Movement," and "What to Do."

c. "Based on his reading of Scripture and the history of Christianity--that is, his theology of history--

d. Rauschenbusch asserts that `the essential purpose of Christianity [is] to transform human society into the kingdom of God by regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God'."

(1) Quote from R's Christianity and Social Crisis, p. xiii.

(2) As cited in P. Travis Kroeker. "Theology, Ethics and Social Theory: The Social Gospel Quest for a Public Morality." Studies in Religion 20 (1991): 185.

8. Rauschenbusch's Christianizing the Social Order, (New York: Macmillan, 1912).

a. Rauschenbusch takes up many of the themes in his earlier book, Christianity and the Social Crisis, and further details his discussion of the contemporary social issues.

b. In the book's introduction Rauschenbusch stated his underlying conviction: "If this book was to be written at all, it had to deal searchingly with the great social sins of our age.

c. "Evangelism always seeks to create a fresh conviction of guilt as a basis for a higher righteousness, and this book is nothing if it is not a message of sin and salvation."

9. Other works by Rauschenbusch:

a. Dare We to be Christian?. Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1914.

b. The Social Principles of Jesus. New York: Association Press, 1916.

"... the will of God is identical with the good of mankind." p. 128.

c. A Theology for the Social Gospel. New York: Macmillan, 1917; Nashville: Abingdon, 1945.

(1) An expansion of the 1917 Nathanial E. Taylor Lectures delivered in the Yale School of Religion, in which

(2) Rauschenbusch sought to elaborate a systematic theology which would sustain the Social Gospel movement.

d. The Righteousness of the Kingdom. A reconstructed text by Max L. Stackhouse of an early unpublished manuscript. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968.

C. Aims of the Social Gospel Movment

1. Conflict of vision between Social Gospelers and capitalists:

2. "Democracy, backed by the kingdom of God ideal and characterized by freedom, quality and solidarity, is being challenged and undermined by the capitalist economic system's competitive individualism and priority of profit over the common good." [Kroeker, p. 181.]

3. "The social gospel has bequeathed to North American social ethics an influential model of religious social theory, one that attempts to re-orient the progressivist assumptions and objectives of modern liberal society religiously by relating them to an interpretation of biblical Christianity." p. 182.

D. Evaluation of the Social Gospel Movement

1. "The social gospel clearly stands in the liberal Protestant tradition of Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Troeltsch, where the theological task becomes one of mediating between the Christian tradition--its essential meaning or Wesen--and the modern world.

a. This mediation is thoroughly historical, rooted in an analysis of the human experience or consciousness of God as the immanent `spirit of the whole' of reality.

b. As Ernst Troeltsch argued, the mediation is also fundamentally an ethical task, a practical moral task carried on in relation to Christ social formations and their interaction with social and cultural forces.

c. It entails `taking a stand' by formulating the meaning of the Christian `idea' rooted in its normative symbols, and realizing it in critical correlation with the modern historical situation--its possibilities and problems." p. 194.

2. "In this regard, the social gospel has contributed significantly to the shape and direction of religious social ethics and the quest for a public morality in North American society.

a. It articulated a religious ethic and a political vision that critically addressed the current socio-economic situation, calling society and individuals to live up to their own religious traditions and democratic institutions." p. 195.

b. "The social gospel movement represents a religious response to the social problems of capitalist society and an attempt to make theology relevant to the social order by elaborating a public ethic." p. 195.

3. "The social gospel argued and struggled for the articulation of a democratic political culture as a spiritual and moral order,

a. not just a formal procedural process,

b. lest our public discourse and institutions be reduced to instrumental means for the realization of private economic interests." p. 195.

E. The Failure of the Social Gospel Movement

1. "The failure of the social gospel, however, is to be found precisely here, in the interpretation and mediation of the spiritual order represented in Christian symbolism as a humanly constructed social ideal to be realized historically." p. 196.

2. "The kingdom of God ideal is historicized in a way that produces Promethean aspirations to the complete mastery of nature and history by human agents in a harmonious social order free from alienation, conflict and exploitation.

3. The social gospel finally falls into the // Hegelian trap, the substitution of historicity for a lost spirituality, the attempt to resolve the spiritual tension of human existence temporally through political action.

4. It translates religious symbols into historically created, humanly realizable social projects.

5. The immanent and dialectical process of history leads to the progressive realization of Sittlichkeit, a public morality in which the material needs of all are equally met and individual wills find their harmonious expression in a universal volonté générale, sustained by human control of the processes of nature and history.

6. The divine will is identified with historical progress and in the process reality is decisively transformed.

7. This parousia is mediated politically by human action." [Kroeker, pp. 197-198.]

IX. PROTESTANT NEO-ORTHODOXY MOVEMENT

A. Historical Background

1. Disillusionment with Liberal Protestantism

2. Failure of the Social Gospel Movement

3. Shock of World War I

4. Great Depression in Europe and America

5. Rise of Fascism

B. Karl Barth (1886--1968).

1. Swiss, never took a doctorate!

2. Influence on Dietrich Bonhoeffer

3. Key works:

a. Der Römerbrief. 1918. (The Epistle to the Romans).

(1) Not just a commentary.

(2) Barth's governing thesis is that the problems confronting Paul were essentially the same as those confronting the contemporary preacher and theologian.

b. Church Dogamtics

(1) 30 year project

(2) 4 volumes

(3) However, shortly after WWII Barth gave a series of lectures in Bonn which were eventually published as an outline to Church Dogmatics

(a) Dogmatics in Outline. With a new Foreword by the author. Translated by G.T. Thomson. New York: Harper and Row, 1959.

(b) German Original: Dogmatik im Grundriß. Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag A.G. Zollikon, 1949.

4. Barth's Ethics' Bibliography:

a. Ethik I-II. (Gesamtausgabe II-III, 1928-1929). Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1928-1929; 1973, 1978.

b. In English: Ethics. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Edited by Dietrich Braun. New York: Seabury Press, 1981.

c. English edition is a condensation of the two volumes from the Swiss Gesamtausgabe.

d. Lectures given as courses at the University of Münster in 1928-1929.

e. These particular lectures on ethics were not published during Barth's own lifetime because he felt that in them he might appear to advocate the doctrine of the orders of creation--which doctrine he came later to reject strongly.

f. These lectures "clearly came to serve as a first draft of the ethical section of the Church Dogmatics." p. vi.

5. Influence of Barth's historical context on his theology

a. Disillusionment of WWI and Protestant Liberalism

b. "Less than two months after Hitler came to power, Barth claimed that the key danger facing the church is the temptation of having other gods.

c. This temptation arises when revelation is joined with foreign authorities, such as human existence or the state.

d. "He therefore called Christians to abandon `every kind of natural theology, and dare to trust only in the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ'.

e. "The ecclesiastical statement of these themes was the Barmen Declaration of 1934." Douglas F. Ottati, "Between Foundationalism and Nonfoundationalism." Affirmation 4 (Fall, 1991): 31.]

6. Barth's understanding of theology:

a. "A `system' is an edifice of thought,

b. constructed on certain fundamental conceptions

(1) which are selected in accordance with a certain philosophy

(2) by a method which corresponds to these conceptions.

c. "Theology cannot be carried on in confinement or under the pressure of such a construction.

d. "The subject of theology is the history of communion of God with man and of man with God.

e. "This history is proclaimed, in ancient times and today, in the Old and New Testaments.

f. "The message of the Christian Church has its origin and its contents in this history.

g. "The subject of theology is, in this sense, the `Word of God'."

h. From the new Foreword to his Dogmatics in Outline. With a new Foreword by the author. Translated by G.T. Thomson. New York: Harper and Row, 1959, p. 5.

i. [Someone like Klaus Demmer would assert that theology could be done only within a system!]

7. Barth's definition of "dogamtics":

a. "Dogmatics is the science in which the Church,

b. in accordance with the state of its knowledge at different times,

c. takes account of the content of its proclamation critically,

d. that is, by the standard of Holy Scripture

e. and under the guidance of its Confessions." Dogmatics in Outline, p. 9.

8. Barth's elaboration on the relation of Scripture to Dogmatics:

a. "In dogmatics we do not ask whence Church proclamation comes and what its form is.

b. "In dogmatics our question is: What are we to think and say?

c. Of course, that comes after we have learned from Scripture where we have to draw this `what' from,

d. and keeping in view the fact that we have to say something not just theoretically, but have to call something out to the world." Dogmatics in Outline, p. 12.

9. Barth's 4 categories of Christian faith:

a. in spite of,

b. once for all,

c. exclusively

d. and entirely

e. "When we believe, we must believe in spite of God's hiddenness." p. 20.

f. "And faith is concerned with a decision once for all.

(1) "Faith is not an opinion replaceable by another opinion.

(2) "A temporary believer does not know what faith is.

(3) "Faith means a final relationship." p. 20.

g. "And, thirdly, faith is concerned with our holding to God exclusively, because God is the One who is faithful." p. 21.

h. "And, in conclusion, we may hold entirely to God's Word.

(1) "Faith is not concerned with a special realm, that of religion, say,

(2) but with real life in its totality,

(a) the outward as well as the inward questions,

(b) that which is bodily as well as that which is spiritual,

10. Barth's basic understanding of ethics

a. Related to dogma and ecclesiology

b. Key point for Barth is nature of Revelation

(1) "For Barth, we have knowledge of God only because God has chosen to reveal himself to man.

(2) "And God has chosen to reveal himself in the life and events of a particular people, and in Jesus Christ:

(3) "Thus the biblical record and materials are the source of God's revelation and of any reliable knowledge of God."

Gustafson, Ethics and Theology. Volume 2 of Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, p. 28.

c. Divine commands are rooted in the Divine election, "I am the Lord your God, therefore you shall ..."

d. God's commands are always concrete, definite and specific.

(1) "God does not provide us merely with a rough rule and then depend on us to make an appropriate application of it in varying circumstances.

(2) "God always speaks directly to our situation. In his command, as in everything else, he confronts us existentially."

(3) "In order to throw man back in absolute fashion upon the direction of God, Barth denies that God's command ever comes in the form of a general maxim, or a universal rule, or an abstract law." p. 105.

(4) "In Barth's view the commands of God are artificially distorted if we try to generalize and transform them into universally valid principles. The command is always specific. There are no commands save those which come to this or that particular man in this or that particular situation." p. 105.

[Henry Stob, "Themes in Barth's Ethics." Chapter 8 of Ethical Reflections: Essays on Moral Themes, 103-110. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1978], p. 105.

e. Roman Catholic evaluation of this basic position?, e.g. Universal moral norms.

f. Fundamental question of [Barthian] ethics: "The Christian form of this question is: What is commanded of us by God?

g. "Not man but the Word of God as the commanding and claiming of man is, as the acting subject, the theme of theological ethics.

h. "It would be a misunderstanding to conceive of this Word as an abiding objective truth which is inscribed somewhere and formulated in some way, which man may know or not and acknowledge or not, and over which he can gain the mastery by insight or act.

i. "Instead, it is expressly understood as the revelation of the command of God, as a present event in the midst of the reality of our life which he who hears God's Word cannot overlook."

[Dietrich Braun, in the Editor's Preface to Barth's Ethics, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed. Dietrich Braun, (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), p. vii].

11. Elaboration of Barth's Theological Ethics

a. "[E]thics for Barth is and must be theological. Ethics is not merely applying biblical teachings to various moral problems;

b. "it is not finding moral positions and then developing a theology that backs them.

c. "The critical question is the // theological question in the most precise and restricted sense: What is the proper doctrine of God?" [Gustafson, v. 2, p. 26-27].

d. "Jesus Christ is the center of Barth's theology, both in terms of how human beings know God, and what it is about God that is known." [Gustafson, v. 2, p. 28].

e. "The idea of a covenant between God and man is central to Barth's ethics;..." [Gustafson, v. 2, p. 29.

f. Will see this ethical centrality of covenant in the ethics of Paul Ramsey.

C. Some differences between Barth and Roman Catholic moral theology:

1. Different theology of Revelation

2. Different understanding of theological anthropology

3. Ethical analogies are drawn from relationships between persons [covenant] rather than from an order of being [neo-scholastic theology].

4. Obvious differences on the understanding of universal moral norms, and its practical significance for ethics.

5. Different stresses and accents in Christian ethics.

6. E.g., "Thus fundamental to Barth's view of human activity is the outlook of stewardship, of man as a participant in and a caretaker of a world that is // given by God." [Gustafson, v. 2, pp. 40-41].

D. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1. Bonhoeffer was born 4 February 1906 in Breslau into a Lutheran, upper-class family. His father was a noted psychiatrist.

2. Bonhoeffer was imprisoned in April 1943 and hanged at the age of 39 by the Gestapo in the Nazi concentration camp at Flossenbürg in April 1945.

3. Most major works were published posthumously by his long-time friend Eberhard Bethge.

a. The Cost of Discipleship

b. Ethics

(1) First, remember this is an unfinished work, arranged by an editor, with sections either lost, destroyed, or not fully worked out.

(2) Written in relative isolation, i.e., in prison.

4. Bonhoeffer's Hermeneutical Principle of Obedience:

a. "The only response to such an absolute Word can be absolute// obedience. Obedience is not the product of a faith which could have been present already: it is faith's immediate expression.

b. "And such obedience cannot try to drift off into the illusory sphere of some purely interior life. It must be at once <simple> and direct." [Marlé, pp. 80-81].

c. [From Cost of Discipleship]:

"The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus. How could the call immediately evoke obedience?" p. 61

d. Bonhoeffer's answer:

"And why? For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself." [Cost, p. 61].

5. Christology of Call & Obedience:

a. "This encounter [between Levi and Jesus] is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus.

b. "There is no need of any preliminaries, and no other consequence but obedience to the call.

c. "Because Jesus is the Christ, he has the authority to call and to demand obedience to his word.

d. "Jesus summons men to follow him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God." [Cost, p. 62].

6. Bonhoeffer's ethics: conformity and responsibility.

a. "The Christian ethic Bonhoeffer outlines can be summed up in a single idea: conformity, or better perhaps conformation, to Jesus Christ.

b. "It is an ethic that grows out of contemplation: Ecce homo. ...[Christ] must be continually formed in our world and our history.

c. "But there is also a specific place where this happens: the Church." p. 98.

d. In his Ethics insofar as there is a basic ethical principle: "the conclusive moral demand is for conscious responsibility,

e. not naively to//one's own "Christian calling," which begs the question, but to the world, where Christ carried out His responsibility."

[Kuhn, In Pursuit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (Garden City: Doubleday, Image Books, 1969), pp. 129-130].

f. Ethical question of responsibility for Bonhoeffer:

(1) "Bonhoeffer always understood himself to be an exception, one who had gone further than most Christians were expected to go.

(2) "The problem was that most Christians hadn't gone very far at all.

(3) "And why? Because they weren't good Christians?

(4) "Or because their understanding of Christian ethics stopped at the doorstep of political involvement, of personal response to social crisis?" [Kuhn, p. 127].

7. Bonhoeffer's Model of the Church: Herald:

a. "When we go to church and listen to the sermon, what we want to hear is his Word--and that not merely for selfish reasons, but for the sake of many for whom the Church and her message are foreign." [Cost of Discipleship, p. 37].

b. "Low" Ecclesiology:

"The real trouble is that the pure Word of Jesus has been overlaid with so much human ballast--burdensome rules and regulations, false hopes and consolations--that it has become extremely difficult to make a genuine decision for Christ." [Cost, p. 38].

8. Have more to say perhaps about Bonhoeffer when we treat thematic areas of sin and grace.

E. Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

1. Son of German immigrants, (father was a Evangelical minister), older brother of H. Richard.

2. Pastor at Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit from 1915-1928, where he saw first hand problems of American industrialism, in the auto industry.

3. Taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1928 until retirement in 1960. Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to Union to do a post-doctoral fellowship under Niebuhr.

4. Critic of capitalism, and joined the Socialist Party briefly and was a former pacifist, though he broke with the Socialists over their refusal to oppose Hitler and then campaigned actively for Christians to support the war against Hitler.

5. Had considerable influence in the U.S. State Department after WWII where he was a strong support of the U.S. Cold War policy of resistance to Soviet political expansion.

6. Yet, on the other hand he always criticized the claims of any special American virtue, and resisted imposition of American policies on new countries which emerged after the Second World War.

7. Theological position of "Christian Realism" which emphasized the persistent roots of evil in human life.

8. Man and Immoral Society (1932)

a. stressed human egoism and pride as well as the hypocrisy of nations and social classes.

b. Spoke of original sin in the sense of human insecurity and overdefensiveness in the face of finitude.

c. "... Niebuhr accepted a basic contention of Marx and Engels,

(1) that the problem of society is the problem of conflicts of interest between social groups,

(2) rather than the moral behaviour of the individual.

d. The relationships of groups, said Niebuhr, were not ordered by the same morality as those of individual persons;

(1) persons could move in the order of love,

(2) but groups moved in the order of justice.

e. The basis of love was sacrificial giving of the self,

f. but the basis of justice was the distribution of power." [Michael Keeling, The Foundations of Christian Ethics, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990): 4.

9. Criticized liberal Protestant beliefs in assured progress and utopian hopes.

10. Spoke of "common grace" and necessity of political activism.

11. Classic statement: "the saints are tempted to continue to see that grace may abound, while sinners toil and swear to make human relations a little more tolerable and slightly more just."

12. Bibliography: Some titles which indicate the sweep of his theology:

a. Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History. New York: Scribner's, 1937, 1961.

b. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense. New York: Scribner's, 1944, 1960; London: Nisbet & Co., 1945.

c. Christian Realism and Political Problems. New York: Scribner's, 1953; London: Faber & Faber, 1954

d. Faith and History. New York: Scribner's; London: Nisbet & Co., 1949.

e. Intellectual Autobiography of Reinhold Niebuhr.

f. The Irony of American History. New York: Scribner's, 1952.

g. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. New York: Scribner's, 1932, 1960.

h. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. Gifford Lectures. New York: Scribner's, 1953, 1964.

F. H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962)

1. Born 3 September 1884, died 5 July 1962.

2. PhD in religion from Yale in 1924, taught at Yale from 1931 until his death. Somewhat more academic background than his older brother Reinhold.

3. Influenced by Karl Barth, Søren Kierkegaard and Ernst Troeltsch.

4. H. Richard Niebuhr encouraged historical criticism of religious beliefs with a view to the reinterpretation of church teachings in a such a way that they would be more meaningful in contemporary culture.

5. H. Richard Niebuhr's critique of the naive optimism of Liberal Protestantism:

"In its one-sided view of progress which saw the growth of the wheat but not that of the tares, the gathering of the grain but not the burning of the chaff, this liberalism was indeed naively optimistic. A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

[From The Kingdom of God In America, 1937, 1959. p. 193]

6. Will return to H. Richard Niebuhr later in the course, especially in consideration of some parts of his book, The Meaning of Revelation.

7. Essential Bibliography

a. The Kingdom of God in America. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1937.

b. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 1951.

(1) I cinque modelli di relazione descritti da H. R. Niebuhr

(a) Cristo contro la cultura

(b) Cristo della cultura

(d) Cristo e cultura in paradosso

(e) Cristo trasformante la cultura

(2) Il quinto è il suo modello preferitto

c. The Meaning of Revelation. New York: Macmillan, 1941 and 1960.

d. Radical Monotheism and Western Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 1960.

e. The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy. With an Introduction by James M. Gustafson. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

(1) Published posthumously, and based principally on the 1960 Robertson Lectures delivered at the University of Glasgow, with selected passages from the Earl Lectures delivered at the Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley, CA) and a series of addresses given at the Riverside Church in New York City.

(2) The book contains a preface by the author's son, R. Richard Niebuhr, plus a long introduction by James M. Gustafson, one of Niebuhr's most well-known former students.

X. POST WWII DEVELOPMENTS

A. New World Order, Cold War, etc.

B. Ecumenical Movement

1. World Council of Churches

a. Brief historical and structural overview: see handout

b. Book on the reserve shelf: Marlin VanElderen, Introducing the World Council of Churches. Risk Book Series. Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990.

(1) Concise and well-done introduction to the aims, history, ecumenical theology, modes of operation, etc. of the World Council of Churches.

(2) Not heavily theological, and intended as a sort of apologia for the WCC, though it does honestly recognize certain critiques of WCC policies by others.

(3) VanElderen is editor of the WCC's monthly magazine, One World.

c. Five overlapping phases of ecumenical theology, seen from the Protestant perspective.

(1) Evangelical revival of the 19th century and reaction against the widespread indifference to the Gospel.

(a) This phase was largely non-intellectual, and non-denominational in its theology.

(b) At the 1910 conference in Edinburgh, for example, doctrinal differences were specifically avoided.

(2) From the mid-1920's Protestant "Liberalism" began to come into force.

(a) Example: The Life and Work Movement,

(b) which reflected much of the same sort of thinking as the US "Social Gospel" movement.

(3) Radical critique of liberalism, the neo-orthodoxy movement

(a) associated with people such as Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Emil Brunner.

(b) These insisted that "theology depends only on God's self-revelation in Scripture, not on human culture...." p. 138.

(4) Biblical theology--

(a) interpreting the Scripture from a Christocentric historical view,

(b) i.e., Jesus Christ as the center of the history of salvation.

(5) "The early 1960s saw the waning of the influence of the great systematic theologies of Barth, Tillich and others.

(a) The ecumenical movement was coming to rediscover a prophetic tradition of theology, and

(b) there was a growing call to make theology relevant by `contextualizing' it, rooting it in its historical and cultural setting." p. 138.

d. Above is according to German ecumenical theologian Konrad Raiser, and summarized in VanElderen, p. 138.

e. Will return to this in the last section on "Final Evaluation"

2. Growing theological cooperation and dialogue

a. Connection here between developments on the dogamtic line with that of moral.

b. Recall Vatican postures of dialogue and openness, and all that I said in the first lecture.

C. Vatican II

1. Place of John XXIII in the eyes of Protestants

2. Protestant observers at the Council

3. Cf., e.g., work of Robert MacAfee Brown

4. Will have more to say about Vatican II later

XI. EMIL BRUNNER (1889-1966)

A. Swiss theologian,

1. ordained in the Swiss Reformed Church and served as a pastor at Obstalden, Switzerland from 1916-1924 and

2. then became professor of systematic and practical theology at the University of Zürich.

3. Note that pastoral ministry is found in the personal background of many modern Protestant theologians, and this perhaps accounts for their concern for the rapport of theology with the concrete problems of the modern world.

B. Concerned with ecumenism and was delegate to the first Assembly of the WCC in Amsterdam, 1948.

C. In retirement he was professor of Christian philosophy at the International Christian Univeristy in Tokyo (1953-1955).

D. Some of Brunner's principal theological concerns:

1. His Neo-Orthodoxy:

a. arose from the despair of the Post WWI culture,

b. and in which he and others sought to reaffirm the central themes of the Protestant Reformation against the early trend of Liberal Protestantism.

c. E.g., his two early works

(1) The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith. London: Lutterworth Press, (1927), 1934.

A study of Christology.

(2) The Theology of Crisis. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, (1929), 1935.

A repudiation of post-WWI European culture.

d. One of the few Protestant theologians to do a "systematic" work in Christian ethics.

e. Brunner's principal early work on Christian ethics, The Divine Imperative: A Study in Christian Ethics. London: Lutterworth Press, (1932) 1937.

2. Common points with Barth:

a. "Brunner, like Barth, regarded sin as humanity's defiant exaltation of itself to godlike independence.

b. "Like Barth, he claimed that we do not know God apart from the history of Israel and Jesus Christ." [Douglas Ottati, "Between Foundationalism and Nonfoundationalism." Affirmation 4 (Fall, 1991): 31].

E. Break with Barthian theology

1. Natur und Gnade: Zum Gespräch mit Karl Barth (1946)

2. Asserted that in the human the image of God has endured since creation, and has therefore never been wholly lost.

3. "Where Brunner differed from Barth was in the attempt to show that // revelation furnishes us with knowledge of the good--of personal freedom, responsibility, and community--

4. which, in turn, forms the basis for our interpretation of created orders, e.g., family, labor, the state.

5. "In this sense, Brunner continued to cling to a vestige of the universal impulse,

a. believing that once human understanding is reoriented in faith,

b. it is able to discern divine purposes in the world." [Douglas Ottati, "Between Foundationalism and Nonfoundationalism." Affirmation 4 (Fall, 1991): 32].

F. Christian foundation for all culture and de-Christianization of life today

1. "...Brunner means to make clear the duty of theology to so present God's word that it will touch man's rational self-understanding.

a. "But he offers still another essential consideration: the growing de-Christianization of life today,

b. and with it the ever-growing confusion and disorientation of men's minds.

2. "These compel theology to concern itself with man's existential problems as a service of love:

3. [As Brunner states]`... The events of our own day have at last compelled us to see that there must be a Christian foundation to all culture.'"

[Wenzel Lohff, "Emil Brunner," in Theologians of Our Time, ed. Leonhard Reinisch, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), p. 36.

G. Reason and Faith in Brunner's theology

1. Brunner's approach is not to rise from rational experience to an understanding of revelation, but the opposite:

2. [As Brunner states] "`Revelation, in the act of faith, lays hold upon man's reason, but never does reason lay hold upon revelation'.

3. "The problem of reason and revelation [as Brunner says] `finds its general solution in the fact that revelation can never find a place in reason, but reason finds a place in revelation'." [Lohff, p. 36].

H. Brunner's formulation of the natural law, based on an elaboration of the Lutheran doctrine of the orders of creation.

1. Thoughts from his 1943 Justice and the Social Order, (English translation: London: Lutterworth Press, 1945):

2. "`The order of creation as the principle of all justice alone allows us to understand why both our common manhood and our single individuality contain something that in all justice must be recognized--a claim, a right whose recognition constitutes justice. If we bypass the order of creation we shall find no relation between the norm of justice and the identity of the creature.'" [Lohff, p. 50].

3. "Here Brunner has brought out something that is, after all, analogous to the old law of nature:

a. "an original order to which all human thought can turn as to a final source of justice.

b. "It differs from the old natural law in that it is within the province of faith.

(1) "And since faith in creation achieves full clarity only through faith in Christ, this new natural law may be called `Christological', that is, a law which finds its only legitimate ground in the Christian // faith

(2) "And since, as Brunner has shown, the revelation of faith lays claim also to human reason, the new doctrine of Christological natural law is bound to demand that secular human reason, in its search for the order of justice, be guided by faith." [Lohff, pp. 40-41].

XII. PAUL TILLICH (1886-1965)

A. Tillich was forced to leave his chair in Frankfurt in 1933 for criticizing the National Socialists (Nazis).

1. He then came to the USA, without knowing any English!, where he taught for twenty-two years at Union Theological Seminary in New York,

2. followed by appointments at Harvard and finally at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago (until his death).

3. Key Protestant theological centers in the United States: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Union Theological in New York, and Chicago.

B. Theological attitude to contemporary culture

1. "For Tillich, theology and philosophy are called to actualize themselves in continuous dialogue and encounter with scientists, artists, sociologists, economists, depth psychologists and others intent on expressing and interpreting reality."

[Leibrecht, "The Life and Mind of Paul Tillich." In Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, p. 10.

2. For example, according to Tillich, a "theological" contribution of modern depth psychology has been to uncover "the realities of man's inner life as conditioned by anxiety, fear and the sense of guilt, which are rooted not in the rational but in the unconscious and subconscious dimensions of human existence."p. 24.

3. However, Tillich would say the psychiatrists are wrong, "if they expect to deal with these phenomena of human estrangement purely as pathological phenomena, to be treated by professional techniques." p. 24.

4. Thus, in brief, the theologian's central task is to mediate between faith and culture.

5. "Ethical action is not the way to reunion with God. Although Tillich never separates religion and ethics, he sharply distinguishes between them. He makes ethics directly dependent on religion, and therewith finds himself in a position against all those stands of modern theology which, following Ritschl, reduced religion to ethics." [Leibrecht, p. 15].

C. See here how Tillich sought to elaborate "normativity" in ethics:

D. Tillich's 3 Point "Systematic" ethics

1. "... first the ultimate principle of Christian ethics is agape, which is known as the law of human nature;

2. "the second part of the structure is human wisdom as represented in laws, moral principles, and guidelines;

3. "third is the concrete situation in which the actor takes upon himself the risk of moral decision. This pattern of love, law, and situation is present in most of Tillich's writings on ethics."

[Ronald H. Stone, Paul Tillich's Radical Social Thought, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980), p. 119].

E. The Protestant Principle (and theonomy)

1. Tillich's "Protestant principle" seeks to describe the essence of the Reformation.

2. Quoting Tillich himself:

a. "`The Protestant principle as derived from the doctrine of justification through faith rejects heteronomy (represented by the doctrine of papal infallibility)

b. as well as self-complacent autonomy (represented by secular humanism).

c. `It demands a self-transcending autonomy, or theonomy.'"

[Horst, Bürkle, "Paul Tillich," in Theologians of Our Time, 65-77, ed. Leonhard Reinisch, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), p. 70].

3. Theological purposes of the "Protestant Principle" and meaning of theonomy.

a. Similar to Luther's Second Use of the Law,

b. "He [Tillich] has, in his `Protestant principle', forged a hammer for crushing the idols of modern man:

c. he rejects all attempts to make the conditional into the unconditional, all attempts to give undconditional loyalty to the conditioned.

d. `Theonomy' as divine demand is set by Tillich in opposition to modern man's dizzy staggering between empty `autonomy' and imposed // totalitarian `heteronomy'.

e. Theonomy is not a divine law `over and against' man, asking for man's subjection; it is not a disguised form of heteronomy.

f. It is `autonomous reason united with its own depth'." [Leibrecht, pp. 16-17]

F. Tillich's levels and understanding of moral norms

1. "Agape is the one universal element of the human moral situation in Tillich's view." [Stone, p. 119].

2. "The second level of the theory accepts the relativity of all moral principles unless they are alternative formulations of agape, which in itself includes justice and the honoring of a person as a person.

a. "Moral principles, or middle axioms, are not despised, but they are considered thoroughly relative.

b. "They are useful as guidelines, and if they embody agape and meet the situation, they may be the ground upon which the moral decision-make acts.

3. "The third ingredient--the situation--requires a loving receptiveness on the part of the decision-maker.

a. "It is at this point that the tools of the social and psychological sciences have their greatest importance for Tillich.

b. "His antimoralism demands that as many of the particulars of the situation as possible be understood.

G. "In Tillich's ethic, there is no security; there is only the risk of moral decision and the comfort that trust in the power of forgiveness brings." [Stone, p. 119].

H. Tillich's Understanding of Sin as Alienation

1. "Paul Tillich has systematically taken up the word `alienation' but gives it new ethical meaning;

2. it is a new name for sin, and yet not so new if one looks at the bible and tradition."

3. [From Bernard Häring's "Sin in Post-Vatican II Theology." In Personalist Morals: Mélanges Louis Janssens, 87-107. Edited by Joseph A. Selling. Louvain, 1988.

XIII. OTHER PROTESTANT THEOLOGIANS

A. Helmut Thielicke (1908--)

B. Jacques Ellul (1912--)

1. Ellul is a layman and retired professor of history and sociology of institutions in the Faculty of law and economic science at the University of Bordeaux.

2. Due to time considerations I will not treat him, other than mentioning some of his key bibliography.

3. Le Fondemont théologique de droit. Paris: Delachaux, 1946.

a. In English: The Theological Foundation of Law. Translated by Marguerite Wieser. New York: Seabury Press, 1960; London: SCM, 1961.

b. Ellul states that the concept of the natural law, in the sense of being some sort of universal, ideal, normative law is a philosophical abstraction and the product of a definite historical period.

4. La Technique ou l'enjeu du siècle. Armand Colin, 1954.

a. In English: The Technological Society. Revised American edition. Translated and introduction by John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.

b. Probably his best known work in the English-speaking world.

c. Recent work: The Technological Bluff. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1990.

d. Ellul's importance in giving Christian philosophical and ethical reflection on the role of technology in our modern world.

5. Le Vouloir et le faire: Introduction à l'éthique chrétienne. Recherches éthiques pour les chrétiens. Paris: Labor et Fides, 1964.

a. In English: To Will and To Do. Translated by C Edward Hopkin. Foreword by Waldo Beach. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1969.

b. Key work on his earlier ethics.

6. Ethique de la liberté. 3 vols. Genève: Labor et Fides, 1973, 1975, 1984.

a. In English: The Ethics of Freedom. Translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1976.

b. Translation of the first two volumes of Ellul's work.

c. According to Ellul freedom is the locus of Christian ethics and moreover is the ethical aspect of hope as a crtical response to what God has done for us.

C. Trutz Rendtorff

1. Rendtorff is on the Protestant faculty of the Institute for Systematic Theology in the University of Munich.

2. Will skip him this semester since his books never arrived on time in the PUG Library.

D. Paul Lehmann (1906-1994)

1. Ordained Presbyterina minister

2. Lehmann was a friend of Bonhoeffer, and taught for many years at Union Theological Seminary in New York, as well as at Princeton and Harvard.

3. Opposed to McCarthyism and founding chairman of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in 1951.

4. Proponent of European repudiation of liberal Protestantism called "Relationism," i.e., relational ethics as a third option instead of traditional teleological or deontoligcal ethics.

5. Certain similarities to H. Richard Niebuhr, especially in the position detailed in Niebuhr's The Responsible Self,

6. Yet more Christocentric, and more tied in with the community of faith as a source for moral decision-making.

E. Jürgen Moltmann

1. German

2. Experience in English POW Camp

3. Theology of Hope

4. Emphasized ethical and social achievement instead of the need just to resist evil.

5. Together with Johann Baptist Metz, Dorothee Soelle, and others, helped lay foundations for a political theology, which in turn had great influence in the early rise of liberation theology.

F. John Fletcher

1. American Episcopalian

2. Situation ethics: stressed priority of circumstances over norms in determining appropriate actions.

3. English counter-part: J.A.T. Robinson

G. John Coleman Bennett

1. Close colleague of Reinhold Niebuhr

2. Used the term "realism" to express the hope for a more just reordering of society through political and social action.

3. Taught at, and President of, Union Theological Seminary in New York.

4. Has written on Roman Catholic moral theologians and the Curran case, in Curran & McCormick, Readings, No. 6.

H. John Macquarrie

1. Anglican

2. Systematic theologian, not primarily ethician.

3. Will look at his re-formulation of the natural law tradition.

XIV. PAUL RAMSEY (1913-1988)

A. Protestant American who has collaborated with Roman Catholic moral theologians, and about whom a number of Roman Catholic moralists have written:

1. I.e., with Richard McCormick, eds. Doing Evil to Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Conflict Situations. Chicago: Loyola Univeristy Press, 1978.

2. Curran, Charles E. "Paul Ramsey and Traditional Roman Catholic Natural Law Theory." In Love and Society: Essays in the Ethics of Paul Ramsey, 47-65. Edited by James Johnson, and David Smith. JRE Studies in Religious Ethics, 1. Missoula: American Academy of Religion and Scholars Press, 1974.

3. Curran, Charles E. Politics, Medicine, and Christian Ethics: A Dialogue with Paul Ramsey. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973.

B. Ramsey's own Bibliography in 3 Principal Areas, Fundamental Christian Ethics, Just War Theory, and Medical Ethics.

1. Fairly good representation in the PUG Library.

2. Key Works from Ramsey's Fundamental Christian Ethics:

a. Basic Christian Ethics. London: SCM Press, 1950; Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Midway reprint): 1978.

b. Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1965; New York: Scribner's, 1967.

3. Key Works on Ramsey's Just War Theory (and Conscience):

a. War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Conducted Justly?. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1961, 1985.

b. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968.

c. Ramsey as editor: Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism: A Critique of the United Methodist Bishops' Pastoral Letter «In Defense of Creation». With an Epilogue by Stanley Hauerwas. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1988.

(1) Ramsey's last book.

(2) Note critique by Hauerwas.

4. Some Key Works on Ramsey's Medical Ethics:

a. The Patient as Person: Explorations in Medical Ethics. The Lyman Beecher Lectures, 1969. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.

(1) Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University for 1969.

b. Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control. A Yale Fastback, 6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.

c. The Ethics of Fetal Research. A Yale Fastback, 15. New Haven: Yale University Pres, 1975.

d. Ethics at the Edges of Life: Medical and Legal Intersections. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.

C. Ramsey's Use of Agape in Christian Ethics

1. Basic ethical norm: "the starting point and the ultimately authorizing and controlling reference for the action of Christians.

2. Deontolical ethics: "And, in his view, this means that Christian ethics is deontological rather than teleological and consequentialist in character.

3. "`Morality', he writes, `has to do with the definition of right conduct, and this not simply by way of the ends of action. How we do what we do is as important as our goals.'" [Ramsey quote, Basic Christian Ethics, p. 116; Gustafson, Teocentric Ethics, v. 2, p. 85.]

D. Ramsey termed a Protestant casuist

1. "Another important feature of Ramsey's work is the attention he gives to the relevant `factual' matters in the various moral and public issues he addresses." [Gustafason, v. 2, p. 85].

2. "His research is not confined to theology and moral philosophy. Indeed, he as done more to introduce casuistry into contemporary Protestant ethics than any other person; he states principles and rules, and applies them to cases, and takes into account as fully as he can the data pertinent to each case." [Gustafson, v. 2, p. 85].

3. See especially Ramsey's two key essays:

a. "The Case of the Curious Exception." In Norm and Context in Christian Ethics, 67-135. Edited by Gene H. Outka and Paul Ramsey. London: SCM Press, 1968.

(1) Includes a close examination of the so-called case of "sacrificial adultery" of Mrs. Bergmeier, first proposed by Joseph Fletcher in the latter's Situation Ethics.

b. "Incommensurability and Indeterminacy in Moral Choice." In Doing Evil to Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Conflict Situations, 69-144. Edited by Richard A. McCormick, S.J. and Paul Ramsey. Chicago: Loyola Univeristy Press, 1978.

(1) Here Ramsey develops his own position of indeterminacy and incommensurability in moral conflict situations.

(2) Primarily he dialogues with the positions of Richard McCormick and Bruno Schüller, though others are mentioned as well.

E. Ramsey's Medical Ethics

1. Organizing moral symbol of the covenant

2. "The particular principles of medical ethics that he develops are for him grounded in and derived from the themes of hesed (covenant fidelity) and agape (Christian love), the features central to biblical ethics as he earlier interpreted it." [Gustafson, v.2, p. 88].

3. Patrick McCormick, C.M. PUG Thesis done under Klaus Demmer in 1984.

F. Role of the Church in Ramsey's Christian Ethics

1. Basic question: What is to be the proper role of the Church in political affairs, and what does the Church have to say?

2. Cf. Ramsey's Who Speaks for the Church? Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967.

3. Critique of the 1966 Geneva Conference on Church and Society sponsored by the World Council of Churches. Ramsey criticizes the self-understanding the Conference exhibited, especially in its pronouncements on political matters.

4. "The primary limit on the competency of the church stems from the fact that the church and Christian ethics must have specifically Christian warrants for its assertions.

a. "The Christian church has the obligation of taking Christian love as far as it will go--but no further.

b. "It is a question of how far judgments are entailed in the shared affirmations of Christian ethics as such.

c. "Church pronouncements, like Christian social ethics, are limited to the area of the specifically Christian as such.

5. "Ramsey maintains that the specific solution of urgent problems is the work of political prudence and worldly wisdom.

a. "Here there is room for legitimate disagreement among Christians.

b. "In his political ethical theory much of the work of statesmen and the magistrate is in the realm of the prudential."

Charles Curran, Politics, Medicine, and Christian Ethics: A Dialogue with Paul Ramsey. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973, p. 43.

G. Ramsey's Critique of the Protestant Church's Moral Pronoucements

1. "The motivating force behind maximalist church statements is a triumphalistic view of the church which tries to find a new position of leadership for the church--this time in terms of being the immediate conscience of political life.

2. "There is also mingled with this triumphalism a desire for relevance which requires these very specific statements and not just general principles.

3. "The church must be more disciplined in its approach and accept the limits of its competency in terms of the specifically Christian aspects so that it does not try to take over the function of other offices and roles in society.

4. "Ramsey sees here the reality of heresy in the true Pauline sense of the term.

a. "If the church adopts particular actions or positions for which there are no specific Christian warrants, it introduces divisions into the life of the church.

b. "Some Christians might legitimately hold other specific positions, but for reasons which are not specifically Christian." [Curran, p. 45].

5. "Church pronouncements on politics must speak for the whole church and not just for one part of it.

a. Ramsey insists that Protestants too easily get around this by the device of having conferences and groups which speak to the church and not for the church.

b. "But, in reality, they often do speak for the church and try to obtain a maximum of publicity for their specific pronouncements on political events." [Curran, p. 45].

6. "Ramsey naturally has difficulty accepting such a prophetic role for the church and church pronouncements

a. precisely because of the specificity and certitude that accompany such an understanding of prophetism as well as

b. the too easy identification of the present political situation with the kingdom.

c. It is very difficult for us to discern what God is doing in the world. Ramsey insists that politics is science and not prophecy." [Curran, p. 47].

H. Ramsey's Critique of Barthian Ethics

1. Critique of "truncated Barthianism"

2. "...it wants to see all reality under the second article of the Creed (Jesus and his Lordship) and

3. fails to see that Christian life and politics also come under the first and third articles of the Creed.

4. "Thus such a theology forgets creation and reduces the future to the present action of Jesus in the world,

5. which, in reality seems to leave no room for sin, for criticisms of the present and for the realization that the City of God exists in the future and outside history.

6. "Note the triumphalism inherent in such a theology with its collapsed eschaton, its failure to appreciate that sin is also working in our world and its claim to be able to know with certitude what God is doing in this complex and difficult world in which we live." [Curran, p. 46].

I. Evaluation/Critique of Ramsey [ala Charles Curran's Politics, Medicine, and Christian Ethics: A Dialogue with Paul Ramsey. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973]

1. "First, Ramsey unduly restricts the role of Christian ethics and the church to specifically Christian warrants as such." p. 49.

a. The Roman Catholic church does not restrict itself in this sense.

b. "The Christian vision and teaching much include all the truly human.

c. "The ultimate theological justification for this position rests on the doctrine of creation integrated into the whole of God's action.

d. "Christian ethics and the church can and should speak in the light of the whole of God's action and not just a particular aspect of it, ..." p. 50.

2. Second, "...concerns the exact meaning of the Christian and moral judgment. ...

a. "...the relationship of the Christian moral judgment with particular political judgments, and the relationship of the Christian to the prudential judgment." p. 50.

b. proper understanding of prudential judgment:

(1) "I [Curran] believe that prudence obviously does involve much factual perception and much risk taking about possible future consequences, but

(2) "it also involves the importance and understanding of the moral values brought to bear on decision-making.

(3) "Moral values are also a part of the prudential decision even though this also involves fact perceptions and calculated risks.

(4) "Precisely because moral values are involved, the Christian ethicist and the Christian church do have something to say in this area." p. 51.

3. Third, Ramsey's understanding of the church and its moral teaching.

a. "He [Ramsey] assumes that the church // has competency only within the realm of the specifically Christian and there is agreement on this so that divisions should not be brought into the life of the church. ...

b. "Even on specifically Christian warrants, disagreements exist within the church or within any particular church.

c. "There is no reason why there cannot be such possible differences within the church on moral questions.

d. "My objection would be to the claim that such specific judgments are proposed as the only possible Christian or church position." [Curran, pp. 52-53].

e. "He wants to restrict the church just to the specifically Christian warrants which he generally interprets in terms of agape.

f. "In practice he is even more restrictive because he wants to restrict agape just to the deontological aspect.

g. "Ramsey does admit that there are also teleological concerns in Christian ethics, but in practice he now effectively eliminates them from the purview of the church." p. 53.

h. "My [Curran's] own solution is based on the realization that good moral discourse should carefully distinguish between the general and the particular,

(1) with the realization that the competency of Christian ethics and of the church teaching can include all truly human decisions, but in different ways." [Curran, p. 54].

(2) Importance here of "middle axioms":

(3) "The church must try to clarify and enunciate these intermediate goals, values, and attitudes, which should be present in the situation." [Curran, p. 54].

XV. JAMES M. GUSTAFSON

A. Gustafson is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and currently Henry R. Luce Professor of Humanities and Comparative Studies at Emory University.

B. Previously he taught at Yale and the University of Chicago. He has studied at the Chicago Theological Seminary, University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. is from Yale (1955), done under H. Richard Niebuhr.

C. Earlier work had important stress on themes of:

1. The Christian as moral agent,

2. Member of the faith community, and

3. The Christian church as moral community

4. Role and use of Scripture in Christian ethics

5. Moral discernment

6. Specificity of Christian ethics

7. Rapprochement and collaboration with Roman Catholic moral theology and theologians

a. Strong interest and knowledge of

(1) Thomas Aquinas

(2) Karl Rahner

b. Friendship with Roman Catholic moral theologians

c. Direction of younger generation of Roman Cahtolic moral theologians, such as

(1) Lisa Cahill

(2) Richard Roach

(3) William Spohn

D. Key Bilbiography

1. Treasures in Earthen Vessels: The Church as a Human Community. New York: Harper and Row, 1961.

2. Christ and the Moral Life. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

3. The Church as Moral Decision Maker. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1970.

4. Christian Ethics and the Community. United Church Press, 1971; New York: Pilgrim Press, 1979.

5. Theology and Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1974.

a. Seeks to develop guidelines for Christian living that balance spiritual and moral theologies and which investigates ethical issues in modern technological society, such as biomedical development and genetic engineering.

b. According to Gustafson, theological ethics differs from humanistic, philosophical or secular ethics because it begins and ends with a commitment to God.

c. Gustafson organizes his work into three main parts: 1) Perspectives on Theological Ethics (chs. 1-4); 2) Some Substantive Issues (chs 5-9); and 3) Ethics and the Sciences.

d. Several of the chapters in Part 2, such as "Moral Discernment in Christian Life," (ch. 5); "Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics," (ch. 6); and "Relation of the Gospels to Moral Life," (ch. 7); Spiritual Live and Moral Life," (ch. 8) can be found published elsewhere in other anthologies, etc..

6. Can Ethics Be Christian? Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1975.

7. Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

8. Theology and Ethics. Volume 1 of Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981.

a. In this first volume Gustafson reviews many of the current trends in moral theology and philosophy,

b. and then moves to outlining his own fundamental moral theology, which comes out of a re-interpretation of the Protestant Reformed tradition.

c. Briefly stated, Gustafson expresses his overall thesis for a theocentric ethics in these terms:

(1) "Man's place in relation to the universe has to be rethought, as does man's relation to God.

(2) "The moral imperative that I shall develop in due course is this:

(3) we are to conduct life so as to relate to all things in a manner appropriate to their relations to God." pp. 112-113.

9. Ethics and Theology. Volume 2 of Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

a. This second volume "seeks to fulfill a general purpose by answering a single general question:

b. How does the theocentric perspective qualify ethics?" p. 3.

c. After taking some "benchmarks" from contemporary theology and moral philosophy,

d. Gustafson applies his theocentric ethics to selected contemporary moral issues:

(1) marriage and family,

(2) suicide,

(3) population and nutrition, and

(4) allocation of biomedical research funding.

E. Key Secondary Bibliography on Gustafson's Theocentric Ethics:

1. Beckley, Harlan R., and Swezey, Charles M., eds. James M. Gustafson's Theocentric Ethics: Interpretations and Assessments. Macon (GA): Mercer University Press, 1988.

a. Papers read at a conference from 26-28 September 1985 in Lexington, VA on Gustafson's controversial two-volume work, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective.

b. Papers by Robert Audi, Robert Bellah, Edward Farley, Robert Johann, Gordon Kaufmann, Mary Midgley, John Reeder, and John Howard Yoder.

2. Journal of Religious Ethics. 13 (Fall, 1985).

a. Part One of this issue is devoted to Gustafson's Theocentric Ethics and various critiques.

b. Articles by Lisa Cahill, Stanley Hauerwas, Richard McCormick, Paul Ramsey, and Stephen Toulmin.

F. Recall Gustafson's Theological Methodology developed in my first lecture on moral methodology

1. Methodology first developed in his Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics:

2. The Four Base Points according to Gustafson:

a. God,

b. circumstances,

c. human beings, and

d. procedures for making moral decisions." p. 114.

3. Internal and integral coherence of these four base points by means of an organizing metaphor, etc.:

a. "Furthermore, these four must be coherently related to each other by an organizing perspective or metaphor or analogy or principle.

b. "That means that what is said about A should fit in with what is said about B and C and what is said about B should fit in with what is said about A and C and D, etc."

[Martin Reilly, "James M. Gustafson's Framework for Theocentric Ethics," Irish Theological Quarterly 56 (1990), p. 115.

4. The choice and use of the "organizing metaphor" helps us to appreciate differences and similarities of various positions, and aids our evaluation.

5. Function of an "organizing metaphor" in moral epistemology

a. we see things in a certain way,

b. from a certain perspective

c. need to be aware of our "organizing metaphor" as well as that of others.

d. Gustafson, in his Theocentric Ethics,

e. "wishes to replace human good as the moral measure of all things, or right relations between persons, as the moral criterion,

f. by reference to an order of life that is wider than and objective to humans.

g. For in the theocentric perspective the human being is described as a participant in the patterns and processes of interdependence of life in the world.

h. Consequently human purposes and human conduct have to be evaluated not simply on the basis of considerations derived from what is good for humans or what brings about human flourishing or human welfare.

i. Rather reflection is required on how human life is to be related to a moral ordering that is objective to our species.

j. The fitting action is what God is enabling and requiring us to be and to do, not what seems pleasing or fulfilling to human beings.

k. Indeed what God is enabling and requiring us to be and to do may not be pleasing or fulfilling, or for the welfare of humans." [Reilly, p. 121]

6. Other organizing metaphors we have seen, which are in contrast to Gustafson's:

a. "We find out what God is enabling and requiring not in the command of God as found in the bible (cf. Karl Barth),

b. not in the order of nature (cf. Roman Catholic traditional natural law theory)

c. but through the process of moral discernment in relation to what Gustafson calls the divine governance, signs and indicators of which can be found in the patterns and processes of interdependence in life.

d. "These patterns and processes become a basis for ends and values, which in turn support principles and rules.

(1) "The ends and values may not be all for human good, but are for the good of the whole creation.

(2) "That means that sometimes non-human values or ends will take precedence over human ones for the // human is not the crown of creation nor the only or primary concern of God.

(3) "In other words sometimes a human value or good may have to be sacrificed for a non-human one." [Reilly, p. 121].

XVI. STANLEY HAUERWAS (1940--)

A. Hauerwas is a Methodist from Texas who currently is professor of ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University in North Carolina.

B. He studied under James M. Gustafson and for over a dozen years was on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame.

C. Key bibliography of Hauerwas:

1. Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection. Notre Dame: Fides Press, 1974.

2. Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics. Trinity University Monograph Series in Religion. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1975.

3. with Bondi, Richard and Burrell, David B. Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977.

4. A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.

5. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

6. Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped and the Church. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.

7. with William H. Willimon. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony: a Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know that Something is Wrong. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989.

a. According to the authors the "Constantinian era" is over and that now the modern American church is a colony in which the Christians are resident aliens.

b. Meaning of "Constantinian era"

c. Thus, this is a critical time for the church which requires a change in thought, life and direction.

d. At the book's writing Hauerwas was professor of theological ethics at Duke University and Willimon minister and professor of pastoral ministry at the same University.

8. Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990.

a. Discusses religious aspects of suffering, the problem of evil, etc.

9. After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991.

a. Contains an Introduction and six chapters on various "Politics," namely "The Politics of Salvation, Justice, Freedom, Church, Sex, and Witness."

b. This work grew out of Hauerwas' "New College Lectures" presented at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

10. Hauerwas, Stanley M., and Willimon, William H. Preaching to Strangers: Evangelism in Today's World. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.

11. Hauerwas, Stanley M., and Westerhoff, John H., eds. Schooling Christians: "Holy Experiments" in American Education. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1992.

12. Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. Nashville : Abingdon Press, 1993.

a. Includes twelve sermons preached by Hauerwas on various topics.

b. Hauerwas' most recent book to date.

D. Hauerwas' Premises on the Christian moral life

1. What Christian morality is, and is not:

"The Christian life is more than a series of existential decisions or moments of obedience to a clear command of God." p. 93.

2. Significance for Hauerwas' theological anthropology, and its relation to moral formation--which he sees as the key task of Christian ethics:

[Spohn]: "We are not people whose morality emerges at occasional moments of decision, but people with a gradually developing consistency that places those decisions in a personal context." p. 92.

E. Key themes in Hauerwas' Christian ethics

1. Character, vision and virtue

a. Transformation of character which serves as the central aspect of Christian discipleship.

b. Concomitant use of virtues which give a "consistency" to the self.

c. Hearkens back to the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas.

d. While Aristotle and Aquinas present the virtues in general terms, and based on a discussion of human nature, and therefore logically applicable to any human, Hauerwas uncovers "the normative virtues for Christians in the story of Jesus presented by the Gospels." [Spohn, What Are They Saying..., p. 93.

2. Moral development of agent and the Christian community

3. Nature of the Christian community: A "Story-Defined" Community

a. Philosophical Premise and starting point: "No Man is an Island"

b. "What we do and how we do it are ultimately rooted in a way of life, a story that shapes our self-understanding and that of the communities to which we belong.

c. No one can have a completely private story: a way of life is always determined by a specific community to which //we are loyal." [Spohn, pp. 94-95].

4. Function of the Story for the Community

"An adequate and effective community story encourages its adherents to face the particular challenges and tragedies of life. Christians, however, believe the story of Jesus not because of its functional value in ordering life but because of its truthfulness. ... What kind of people does this community and its story produce?" [Spohn, p. 95]

5. Connection with Hauerwas' ecclesiology

a. "The life of the Church is the acid test of the truthfulness of its story. It must live up to its proclamation or it gives the lie to the Gospel." p. 95.

b. "The primary social task of the Church is to be itself authentically. It may challenge secular society on specific issues, but on specific issues, but it must first be visibly different from the world." [Spohn, p.95].

6. Weaknesses' of Hauerwas' ecclesiology

a. Place for "sin" in his church?

b. Separtist ecclesiology--elitist

c. Flight from the world, lack of potential involvement

7. Normative/formative role of the Jesus story for the Christian community

F. Hauerwas' Use of Story in Moral Theology

1. Tied in with central metaphor of discipleship for Christian ethics

2. Use of Scripture to discover the Christian story

a. "The moral use of Scripture, therefore, lies precisely in its power to help us remember the story of God for the continual guidance of our community and individual lives." [A Community of Character, p. 66]

3. "The three foundations of his argument are:

a. the narrative, which shapes Christian life,

b. the community of the Church as the place where Scripture has authority, and

c. the inadequacy of more philosophical accounts of Christian ethics." [Spohn, p. 93].

G. A "Story-Defined" Disciple

1. Example of Jesus' rebuke of Peter in Mk 8:31-36:

2. Mark 8:31-33: Rebuke of Peter

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

3. Mark 34-36: Conditions for discipleship

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?"

4. "Either this story changes Peter and the other hearers so that they embark on that fateful journey, or else they cease to be Jesus' disciples." p. 94.

5. "For Hauerwas, like Niebuhr, Christian ethics aims to transform the self-understanding of the agent. Here the dominant story that shapes the character of the would-be disciples clashes with the story of Jesus." [Spohn, p. 94]

H. Norms for Testing the Truth of a Story

1. To illustrate the concept of testing the "truthfulness" of stories Hauerwas uses Augustine's Confessions and Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich, the latter being a story which fosters self-deception.

2. According to Hauerwas "A truthful story exposes the tragedy and compromising nature of our lives.

a. "Only the story of Jesus, which asserts the necessity of the cross, can shape a self capable of facing such unpleasant truths.

b. Discipleship will always go against the grain." [Spohn, p. 99]

I. Inadequacy of the natural law according to Hauerwas

1. "at best negatively limits action: it cannot tell us what to do, even though it may indicate something that is inappropriate for our humanity." p. 97.

2. Previous attempts at natural law are now seen to be culturally or historically time-bound: e.g. acceptance of slavery, subordination of women. "They were natural only to those who shared that limited cultural story." p. 97.

XVII. SUMMARY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC POSITION

A. Counter-Reformation moral theology

B. Development of casuistry and the manual tradition

C. Neo-scholasticism

D. Post WWII "Renewal of Moral Theology Movement"

E. Vatican II and Optatam totius

F. Humanae vitae and the crisis of its theological reception

G. Increasing cooperation and collaboration with Protestant ethicians.

XVIII. CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO THE NATURAL LAW

A. Background of Traditional Positions on the Natural Law

1. Traditional Protestant Position

a. Lutheran Position

b. Calvinistic Position

2. Traditional Roman Catholic Position

B. Josef Fuchs

1. Natural Law: A Theological Investigation. Translated by Helmut Reckter, S.J. and John A. Dowling. Dublin: Gill and Son, 1965.

2. With his fundamental work, Natural Law: A Theological Investigation, he sought to clarify "the theological foundations of natural law in response to the charges of Barth and Emil Brunner that it was unbiblical and divorced from the saving work of Christ." p. 41. [Spohn, What Are They Saying?]

3. ses the first two chapters of Romans which have been employed traditionally to justify the natural law, i.e., the culpability even of the Gentiles who did not have the Mosaic Law.

4. As Fuchs wrote: "`Since the Law does not establish the difference between good and evil but rather teaches men about what is already good or evil, St. Paul can say that the good works of the heathen constitute a fulfilment of the demands of the Law.'" [NL, p. 8] p. 42 in [Spohn, What Are They Saying?]

5. Different from Protestant notion of being in the image of God:

6. According to Fuchs, for Protestants "`the likeness to God consists only in responsibility and in the fact of being called and in responsding.

a. "That is to say that Protestant thought finds our likeness to God in a relation.'[NL, p. 63].//

b. Protestant notion of "covenant" (e.g. Paul Ramsey).

c. "When that relation is broken, the likeness to God disappears until it is restored by God in Christ.

d. "Catholic theology, by contrast, holds for a humanity that images God even after the Fall and that cannot be eradicated by sin.

e. "Humans image God in their reason and freedom; therefore, even sinners have not lost God's image completely."[ Spohn, pp. 42-43].

7. "God can call individuals to unique vocations through the action of the Holy Spirit, but Fuchs does not believe that vocational experiences are the paradigm of Christian morality. God's will is ordinarily mediated through the human experience of the Christian." [Spohn, p. 44.]

8. [Here Bonhoeffer would most likely not agree {nor do I}; Fuchs seems to have a rather specialized and exalted notion of the Christian vocation].

9. According to Fuchs, in the performance of our daily duties we respond to God, albeit in a mediated manner.

a. "`Moreover,' asserts Fuchs, `to emphasize this explicitly it is of vital importance from the moral and religious point of view that we conceive the demand of the natural law in the concrete situation as the personal demand of the God to the personal man.

b. "The spiritual encounter of man with his own being, the confrontation of his interior and exterior worlds, is in fact an encounter with God.' [NL, p. 132]

10. "To preserve God's sovereignty, Barth at times emphasized the discontinuities between ordinary humam morality and the command of God.

11. Fuchs, on the other hand, stresses the contintuity to safeguard the consistency between God and his creation.

12. For both theologians, however, the absoluteness of the moral demand ultimately rests on the authority of the Absolute God." [Spohn, p. 44.]

13. No such thing as human "nature" that is not touched in some way by the grace of God.

C. John Macquarrie

1. Following Macquarrie's "Rethinking Natural Law," in Readings in Moral Theology, No. 2, 121-145. Also found in Three Issues in Ethics, 82-110, (1978).

2. Natural law as both starting point and bridge concept for Christian ethics:

a. As starting point: Macquarrie's basic question: "...whether, at least under present circumstances, the most appropriate way of doing Christian ethics is the way that sets out from the nature of man, rather than ways that begin from distinctively Christian concepts." p. 121

b. Macquarrie's thesis: "Indeed, I believe that a viable account of natural law could make a vital contribution toward solving three major problems--

(1) the linking of Christian and non-Christian morals,

(2) the shape of a contemporary Christian ethic,

(3) and the relation between faith and morals." p. 121.

3. Christocentric approach to the natural law

a. Contradiction and fulfillment of true humanity:

"To put the matter in another way, Christ does not contradict but he fulfills our humanity; or, better expressed, he both contradicts it and fulfills it--he contradicts our actual condition but fulfills what we have already recognized deep within us as true human personhood." p. 124.

b. Christ as paradigm of self-giving love:

(1) "Can we say that Christ's fullness or perfection is attributed to him because he gave up all other possibilities for the sake of the most distinctly human possibility of all, the one that has the most claim upon all men, namely self-giving love?

(2) "And can we also say that because this love is the most creative thing in human life (for it brings men to freedom and personhood), then Christ manifests the `glory of man' by becoming transparent to the ultimate creative self-giving source of all, to God?

c. Christ as God's Revelation of humanity: Bridge between Christian and non-Christian morals:

(1) "And if indeed Christ is understood as the revelation of God, then this surely strengthens the argument for a basic affinity between Christian and non-Christian morals, for what is revealed or made clear in Christ is also implicit in the whole creation.

(2) "In saying this, I am not `annexing' the whole creation to Christ but rather claiming that what is already present in the whole creation is gathered up in Christ.

(3) "In other words, I am trying to link Christian and non-Christian moral striving not on the ground of redemption but on the ground of a doctrine of creation." p. 125.

d. Probably a better ground, for not all will accept or even understand a common doctrine of redemption.

4. Natural Law as Foundational Morality

a. Historical connection between religion and morals

(1) "It is acknowledged as a matter of fact that during most of the course of human history, religion and morals have been closely associated with each other." p. 131.

(2) "I would say that natural law (or something like it) is implicit wherever an unconditional moral obligation is recognized." p. 133.

b. Example of concrete functioning of the natural law

(1) "The concept of natural law is, among other things, a safeguard against the usurpation by the state of unlimited power." p. 134.

(2) Compares Sophocles' "Antigone" with Acts of the Apostles' account of Peter answering the Sanhedrin: "We must obey God rather than men."

5. Relation of Natural Law to Theistic belief

a. Acceptance of the existence of a "higher law" "does not necessarily commit one to a theistic belief." p. 134.

b. "Indeed, one might even argue that to explain natural law or fundamental morality in terms of a divine Lawgiver is the most primitive and mythological way of expressing the idea." p. 135.

c. "The natural law is not the `will of God', if this is understood to mean that God's arbitrary decree determines right and wrong. ...Justice is such an ultimate notion that it cannot depend even on the will of God. This does not mean that it is more ultimate than God, but rather that it is not external or subsequent to God, for it belongs to his very being or nature." p. 135.

6. Adaptation of traditional natural law theory to contemporary ethics

a. What role the natural law could, and what role it should not play:

(1) "First of all, I think we should be clear about what we are looking for. We are not looking for some extended system of rules.

(2) "Just as the substance of faith can never be adequately or precisely formulated in dogmatic propositions, and just as all such propositions have time-conditioned elements that need to be expressed in new and different ways in new historical situations, so the content of the moral life is never exhaustively or adequately formulated in rules and precepts." p. 138.

b. Need to change from static to dynamic notion of human nature and the natural law:

(1) Problematic here, and potential for misunderstanding and misinterpretation.

(2) "The notion of the unchangeableness of natural law was rooted in the idea of an unchanging nature, both in man and the cosmos.

(3) "But if we acknowledge--as we already have done--that man's nature is open, and the he is always going beyond or transcending any given state of himself;

(4) and if we acknowledge further that this open nature of man is set in the midst of a cosmos which is likewise on the move and is characterized by an evolving rather than a static order;

(5) then we must say that the natural law itself, not just its formulations, is on the move and cannot have the immutability once ascribed to it." p. 140.

(6) See also in this context the excellent section in Häring's Chapter 7: Section 3. Natural law and the historicity of humanity [p. 319-323]

(7) Evaluation of this position:

(a) Problematic of lack of ontology of being

(b) Danger of moral relativism

7. Evaluation of Natural law as criterion of "direction" (rather than "law")

a. "I think we do still have a criterion, but its constancy is not that //of a law, but of a direction. So again we have to say that the word `law' is not entirely appropriate to describe the kind of thing traditionally meant by `natural law'. What is meant is rather a constant tendency, an inbuilt directness." p. 141.

b. Direction as expressive of moral "oughtness," which really is more our concern, than simple judgment of acts performed or contemplated.

(1) "At least in general terms, we know where we ought to be going, and we experience guilt when we go in some other direction. We know where we ought to be going because to exist as a human being is to exist with a self-understanding.

(2) "This is an understanding of both who we are and of who we might become. It involves an image which summons us." p. 141.

c. "Oughtness" and the Imago Dei

(1) "To employ theological language for a moment, we might speak of the imago Dei both as fundamental endowment and as ultimate goal.

(2) "Natural law is, as it were, the pointer within us that orients us to the goal of human existence." p. 141.

d. Changeability of the natural law:

(1) "Natural law changes, in the sense that the precepts we may derive from it change as human nature itself changes, and also in the sense that man's self-understanding changes as he sharpens his image of mature manhood. But through the changes there remains the constancy of direction." p. 142.

(2) "The directedness of moral striving has a constancy which prevents any lapse into sheer relativism." p. 142.

8. Natural Law and Christian discipleship

a. "The Christian, we have seen, defines mature manhood in terms of Jesus Christ, and especially his self-giving love.

b. "But Christ himself is not static figure, nor are Christians called to imitate him as a static model.

c. "Christ is an eschatological figure, always before us; and the doctrine of coming again `with glory' implies that there are dimensions of christhood not manifest in the historical Jesus and not yet fully grasped by the disciples.

d. "Thus discipleship does not restrict human development to some fixed pattern, but summons into freedoms, the full depth of which is unknown, except that they will always be consonant with self-giving love." p. 142.

D. Evaluation of Fuchs and Macquarrie

1. Positive understanding of eschatology in ethics

2. Dynamic notion of discipleship

3. Perduring value of a natural law

XIX. THE NATURAL LAW AND MORAL NORMS

A. Scriptural Passage: Locus Classicus (Rm. 2:12-15)

1. "All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

2. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

3. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law,

4. since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) (NIV)

B. Challenges posed to the natural law theory by the task of inculturation.

1. Question of other culture's approaches, vocabulary, philosophical formulations, etc. of the natural law.

2. Need to separate, or at least distinguish, the reality of the natural law from one or another particular expression of it.

3. Remember that the whole natural law theory was originally conceived as an aid to evangelization

4. I.e., not wishing to deny anything good in a particular culture, etc.

5. Question for ourselves too as to the contemporary comprehensibility of a scholastic rendition of the natural law.

6. Need for a hermeneutics of the natural law,

a. Work for, as Gula does, a contemporary profile of the natural law

b. Speak in language which can be easily understood by contemporary men and women.

c. Delineate the limitations of any particular rendition of natural law

d. In this regard look at how a particular paradigm may function and interrelate with understanding of morality itself

e. E.g., is the natural law really a "law" in our contemporary understanding?

(1) e.g. a "law of nature"?

(2) or a "positive" law imposed by some higher authority

(3) Both of these approaches would be very problematic in coming to a full and mature understanding of the natural law.

7. With all these caveats in place let us now turn to a consideration of St. Thomas' treatment of natural law.

XX. THOMAS AQUINAS' Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 90-97.

A. Overview and Context of Thomas' treatment of the natural law within his treatment on law as a whole

1. Law in general (q. 90-92)

a. Nature of law (q. 90)

b. Divisions of law (q. 91)

c. Effects of law (q. 92)

2. Law in particular (q. 93-97, 98-105)

a. The eternal law (q. 93)

b. The natural law (q. 94)

c. Human law (q. 95-97)

d. The Old Law (q. 98-105)

e. The New Law

3. Thomas' consideration of the natural law (I-II, q. 94), in 6 articles

B. Principle of Exitus et reditus

1. Every comes from God and returns to God

2. Nature of created reality

3. Presupposition and theological context for the natural law

C. The natural law as scientia naturalis

1. From Franz Böckle's Law and Conscience, trans. M. James Donnelly, (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966).

2. "St. Thomas Aquinas understands the natural moral law principally according to a kind of natural knowledge (scientia naturalis).

a. Man possesses an innate tendency through which,

b. without instruction and outside help,

c. he can recognize whatever fundamental demand is made of him for his own self-realization." p. 81.

D. The eternal law and the natural law

1. "The natural moral law is not an order which of itself is given along with the nature of things and understanding.

2. Thomas proceeds much more from the thought that all being is subject to the eternal law

a. (lex aeterna, divine providence) and,

b. on that account, bears within itself a natural inclination for a corresponding norm of life.

3. To a particular degree, this holds good of the essence of the understanding.

4. It also has a natural inclination for a standard of life which corresponds to the eternal law;

a. not, however, in the passive manner of an impressed seal,

b. but in the active sense of the particular concern for oneself and for others (Summa Theologica I-II, q. 91, a. 2: Sibi ipsi et aliis providens).

5. God does not drive man nor lead him through instinct,

6. but leaves a share of personal responsibility to every one possessing rational judgment.

E. Recta ratio

1. According to Thomas:

2. "The natural moral law is, therefore, in the first and proper meaning,

a. an unformulated law (lex indita non scripta,

b. in accord with the New Testament law of grace, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 106, a.1).

3. It is founded in the obligation and right given to the rational, spiritual person

a. to perform actions

b. which correspond to his being

c. which is in the image of God." [Böckle, p. 82]

d. Veritatis Splendor makes much the same point:

(1) "It also becomes clear why this law is called the natural law:

(2) it receives this name not because it refers to the nature of irrational beings

(3) but because the reason which promulgates it is proper to human nature." [VS, 42]

4. "As the law of freedom, it is an original gift in man,

a. not through inborn, moral ideas,

b. but formally through the inclination of reason

c. (together with the corresponding tendencies)." p. 82.

F. Importance of Recta ratio for contemporary moral theology

1. We might say that Recta ratio is a dynamic tendency in the human person in order to approach the "truth," or in other words to "grasp" reality as it is in its holistic sense.

2. Therefore, we would argue that such a conception of morality has its basis and rational standard grounded in reality itself.

3. The function of human reason, or recta ratio,

a. therefore is to discover moral values

b. in the concrete lived experiences of the human person.

4. "With regard to the question of the material content of the norms of the law of nature,

a. it will only be said here that one should not envisage the Catholic law of nature as a collection (Summa) of ready-to-hand, unchangeable directives for conduct,

b. deducible from an unchangeable order of nature [Böckle].

5. "Ontological foundation for moral knowledge is, in the proper sense,

a. not an abstract impersonal being,

b. but the concrete, historical man, this person who allows for no substitute." [Böckle,p. 85].

6. "We have to understand the so-called natural law as having inner unity with the law of Christ.

a. Analogous to the law of grace, the natural //law is also principally no written law (lex scripta),

b. but a law bestowed upon the heart (lex indita).

c. As we have seen, the rational spiritual person has a natural being formed in the image of God.

(1) With this nature there is given a duty and right for corresponding conduct

(2) and it is in this that the natural law is founded.

d. This duty-right quality united with the concrete man must be seen in unity with the Christian salvation-existence." [Böckle, p. 107].

G. Bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum

1. Classic aphorism for the formulation of the most basic norm of the natural law according to Thomas (ST I-II, 94:2).

2. Be careful to translate this accurately: The good is to be done and fostered, and evil is to be avoided.

3. Avoid a simplistic interpretation or a simply tautology; the principle is not as self-evident as it might seem at first glance.

4. Bonum est faciendum et prosequendum means to follow reason and to actualize human potential to be human.

5. Seen in this light evil would be that which frustrates the realization of this human project in its fullness.

6. This is a fundamental and not a "material" norm

a. It does not have "content" in itself,

b. but is better seen as an "indicator" of the proper human dispositions and directions for human moral potential.

XXI. MORAL NORMATIVITY & THE LIFE OF THE CHRISTIAN

A. Moral Norms and Moral Order: Framework of the Problematic

1. Statement of Ecumenical Problematic

a. From Karl Rahner's "Situation Ethics in an Ecumenical Perspective." In The Christian of the Future, 39-48. Questiones Disputatae, 18. New York: Herder and Herder; London: Burns & Oates, 1967.

b. Though Protestant and Roman Catholic moral theology have traditionally approached the role of moral norms in a different way, in the contemporary world which grows increasingly more complex both the individual and the church will have greater difficulty in deducing with certainty concrete applications from universal moral principles.

c. As this is an historical challenge which faces both Catholic and Protestant moral theology their traditional theoretical disputes over each other's theology will have diminishing practical value in responding to this common challenge.

d. "With this new situation, Catholics and Protestants approach one another very [sic] considerably.

(1) "The latter in fact are always inclined by their historical origins to protest legalism and an over-simplified fixing of the content of direct norms of action,

(2) whereas the former defend the validity of general moral principles with specific content always and everywhere.

(3) "The new situation does not of course simply put an end to the dispute over theory. But this becomes milder, first of in practice, for the simple reason that now both parties are clearly faced with the same historical task.

(4) "They have both to answer the question how the individual Christian in the concrete is to be equipped with the insight and strength which he needs to withstand a situation which sets him a moral problem but the correct solution of which can no longer in fact so directly be supplied him by the official Church." p. 47.

2. Framework: 3 Questions on an objective moral order

a. Existence of such an order,

b. Knowability of such an order

(1) Catholic use of reason as a source of such moral knowledge

(2) Protestant "reluctance" to accept, or at least to rely too heavily on this source.

(3) Typical expression of Paul Ramsey:

(a) In reference to Richard McCormick's work in general, and in particular to McCormick's famous 1973 Père Marquette Lecture, Ambiguity in Moral Choice, [delivered at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin] on a reformulation of the principle of the double effect. Ramsey writes:

(b) "Since McCormick has a deeply Catholic mind with its profound confidence in the use of reason in morality, he may mean to suggest // instead that while there are these two sources of moral judgment they will not ultimately be found to contradict one another.

(d) and observing that a too zealous effort to maintain that this is so can only lead to a morally unconstitutional despotism of proportionate reason

(e) (and being Protestants, have better names for that regime)--

(f) may wish to conclude that, in giving us the foundation for a double morality of the kingdoms of God's right and left hands,

(g) McCormick helps us to see how nevertheless the former may `transform' the latter by sensitizing, perfecting, and elevating nuanced judgments of proportion where they necessarily reign in the public sphere." pp. 101-102.

[From Paul Ramsey, "Incommensurability and Indeterminacy in Moral Choice." In Doing Evil to Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Conflict Situations, 69-144. Edited by Richard A. McCormick, S.J. and Paul Ramsey. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978.]

c. Applicability of such a moral order

3. Intrinsically evil acts?

a. Ramsey's two-pronged view:

(1) "Perhaps the term absolute should be banished forever from the discussion of moral questions. Also Latin expressions like malum in se.

(2) "Only God has absoluteness and aseity; and even in his case we scarcely know the meaning of those attributes.

(3) "In any case, reference to God as summum bonum of the human will tells us little about value conflicts." p. 83.

(4) "The moral reason for McCormick's willingness to call some prohibitions virtually exceptionless traces home ultimately to our estimate of long-term consequences, to proportionate reason.

(5) "Such moral constraints are precipitates of and warranted by the moral experience by which humankind has learned that breaches of them lead to worse evil in the effects of action."

[Ramsey, "Incommensurability...," p. 114]

4. Background of contemporary debates in Christian ethics:

a. Situation Ethics Debate (Fletcher, et.al) and

b. Proportionalism

(1) Milestone article by Peter Knauer, "La détermination du bien et du mal par le principe du double effet." Nouvelle Revue Theologique 87 (1965): 356-376.

In English: "The Hermeneutic Function of the Principle of the Double Effect." In Readings in Moral Theology, No. 1: Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition, 1-39. Edited by Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. New York: Paulist Press, 1979.

Also found in English in Natural Law Forum 12 (1967): 132-162.

Auf Deutsch: "Das rechverstandene Prinzip von der Doppeltwirkung als Grundnorm jeder Gewissensentscheidung." Theologie und Glaube 57 (1967): 107-133.

(2) For good discussion of this whole debate see Bernhard Hoose's PUG doctoral dissertation, *Proportionalism: The American Debate and its European Roots. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987.

(a) Revised doctoral dissertation done at the Pontifical Gregorian University under Josef Fuchs, S.J.,

(b) tracing the development and theological issues contained in the moral theory of proporitionalism, from the initial publication of Peter Knauer, S.J.'s 1965 article on a revised approach to the Principle of the Double Effect through subsequent writings and debate primarily in Germany and North America.

B. A Protestant Casuistry? The Contribution of Paul Ramsey

1. "The Case of the Curious Exception." In Norm and Context in Christian Ethics, 67-135. Edited by Gene H. Outka and Paul Ramsey. London: SCM Press, 1968.

2. Basic question with which Ramsey opens his article: "Is it possible to speak of justifiable violations of moral principles?" p. 67.

3. Test Case: "Sacrificial Adultery" case of Mrs. Bergmeier

a. Published as an appendix to Fletcher's Situation Ethics

b. Recount the case:

(1) Mrs. Bergmeier, German held in Russian camp.

(2) Knew of Camp policy that pregnant women or mothers with young children would be released and repatriated.

(3) Had a husband and three (?) children at home.

(4) Impregnated by "friendly" guard.

(5) All went has foreseen, and "little Dietrich was more loved than all the others, since he had done more than anyone else to bring them all together again."

(6) Due to time constraints, we will not discuss the moral rectitude of this case as such.

4. Ramsey's framing of the moral epistemological issue:

a. "The question of a possible justifiable exception is at the same time the question whether there are any unbreakable moral principles or any unbreakable moral rules." p. 68.

b. "We propose to ask: Must all principles and moral rules have exceptions, either in the conception of an `exception' in some theological ethics or in some of the conceptions of it in philosophical ethics today? p. 70.

c. Answers, according to Ramsey, depend on one's view of what ethics is about:

(1) "We may come to one conclusion on this question if the content of ethics, or the matter or relation in question, is judged primarily to depend on the consequence-features;

(2) another, if on fairness-or justice-features;

(3) another, if, as I shall argue must be the case in Christian ethics, on canons of loyalty or canons of faithfulness." p. 70.

5. Ramsey's distinction between principles and rules

a. Principles "are directions of action;..." p. 73. [such as agape]

b. Rule, "In contrast to principles governing or regulating conduct, rules would be particular directives of an action, prescribing or proscribing a definite action." p. 74

c. Ramsey's terminology of a "definite-action rule" as opposed to a "defined-action principle/guide"

6. Ramsey's schema of a "moral spectrum" of principles and rules: [put on board]

a. "Our model of the component stages in moral reasoning can, therefore, be stated as follows: ultimate norm (agape, utility, self-realization, etc.);

b. general principles; defined-action principles, or generic terms of approval and generic offense-terms;

c. definite-action rules, or moral-species-terms;

d. then the subsumption of cases." p. 75.

7. Problematic of the "morally relevant features":

a. "The problem in passing from the most general material principles to defined-action principles and to definite-action rules that more closely specify what is to be done or not done is ordinarily not how to avoid lighting upon morally irrelevant or indifferent features of acts and situations.

b. "A greater difficulty is posed by how hard it is to pay attention to all of their morally relevant features.

c. "This difficulty in turn does not flow from myopia or simply from habitual inattentiveness or occasional unresponsiveness in the decisions we make.

d. "It flows, rather, from the fact that the agent's moral `onlook', his ultimate norm or operational `system' of ethic selects in the features of acts and situations that will appear morally relevant to him while selecting out characteristics that may, on a larger view, be not only relevant but necessary in order to comprehend all the moral wisdom needed for the direction of conduct.

e. "Thus, fairness-features or justice-features of acts, relations, and situations may be overlooked by someone whose gestalt in perceiving relevance or perspective in judging importance or whose ultimate norm leads him always only to consequence-features." p. 81.

f. Analogy of selective color-blindness

8. Ramsey's notion of "canons of loyalty"

a. Importance of "canons of loyalty" in "seeing" all the morally relevant features of an issue.

b. "It is in uncovering all the morally relevant features, all the claims that may not be feature-dependent, it is in giving decisive importance to personal faithfulness-claims establishing `canons of loyalty' both in the moral life and in the organization of an ethical system that a Christian outlook makes its special contribution to moral reasoning." p. 81.

c. Biblical "warrants" and specificity of Christian ethics as background for his concept of "canons of loyalty"

(1) "If one begins in Christian normative ethics with some such statement as `Look on all men as brothers for whom Christ died' or `Be grateful to the Lord who made us His covenant people', and

(2) if all moral reasoning is then reasoning from these `premises', then

(3) the ultimate warrant of them must be an appeal to what the Lord of heaven and earth is believed to have been doing and to be doing in enacting and establishing His covenant with us and all mankind,

(4) in all the estates and orders and relations of life to which we have been called." p. 125.

d. Covenant as ground of canons of loyalty:

(1) "... in the Christian life we are driven deeper and deeper into the meaning of the faithfulness to other men required by the particular covenants or causes between us.

(2) "The relevant moral features which this understanding of the moral law uncovers in every action, moral relation, or situation are primarily the claims and occasions of faithfulness.

(3) "We are therefore driven ever deeper into the meaning of the bonds of life with life.

(4) "The relevant moral features are not primarily `exempting conditions,'// and

(5) they are certainly not oriented mainly upon consequences.

(6) "They are, rather, perceptions of claims upon us already aptly comprised in appropriate principles or canons expressive of specifiable loyalties.

(7) What we have to expect is further sensitivity to what the moral law so understood requires of us, driving us ever deeper into the meaning of the fidelities of life with fellow man and forming conscience and behaviour in these terms." pp. 125-126.

9. No "curious exceptions" allowed to moral principles:

a. "To open every canon of loyalty to morally significant further qualification by consequences would be to place fidelity in peril.

b. "This does not mean that further experience counts for nothing.

c. "It means instead that further experience could only disclose deeper meanings as to how faithfulness within these relations should shape our behavior and our very being in them, our being married, for example, ..." p. 127.

d. "These are surely exceptionless moral rules in the sense that the moral presumption should be that no future eventuality and none of the consequence-features of future situations are going to require morally significant revision of them." p. 127.

C. Movement toward the Universal in the ethics of H. Richard Niebuhr

1. Niebuhr's revision of the two "traditional" types of ethics (teleological and deontological), and the proposal for his own "ethics of the fitting response," or "cathekontic" ethics (from the Greek kαthnkεi, "it is fitting."

a. Teleology:

(1) "In teleological ethics we move toward asking as our final question:

(2) `What idea is the Form of the Good that is the form of the whole?'" [H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, p. 87]

b. Deontology:

(1) "In deontology we eventually ask:

(2) `What is the universal form of the law?'" [H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, p. 87]

c. Cathekontic ethics, the ethics of the fitting:

(1) Key text: Romans 1:28

(2) "...we find ourselves led to the notion of universal responsibility, that is,

(3) of a life of responses to actions which is always qualified by our interpretations of these actions as taking place in a universe, and

(4) by the further understanding that there will be a response to our actions by

(a) representatives of universal community, or

(b) by the generalized other who is universal, or

(5) whose impartiality is that of loyalty to the universal cause."

[H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, pp. 87-88]

2. Critique of H. Richard Niebuhr's position

a. From Thomas R. McFaul's "Dilemmas in H. Richard Niebuhr's Ethics." Journal of Religion 54 (1974): 35-50.

b. "His overwhelming emphasis upon the sovereignty of God left HRN rejecting at every turn the possibility of developing an ethic of prescriptive laws or rules valid for all men at all times and under all circumstances.

c. "What is required instead is universal responsibility in absolute obedience within shifting contexts.

d. "The precise nature of any specific action cannot be determined prior to entry into a particular context, where the pressures and forces of that context are at work creating the opportunities for and limitations of alternative responses." p. 40.

e. "What is really missing in HRN's ethic is any substantive understanding of how one moves from one's perceptions of God's action, on the one hand, to man's response, on the other.

f. "Beyond the most generalized of visions, how does God make it known that man should act // responsibly in one way and not another?

g. "If there are finally no norms, rules, or moral prescriptions or proscriptions upon which one may base his decisions, but only hope in the coming of the universal community,

h. "then is not one finally thrown back upon purely subjective criteria, such as mood, feelings, or personal intuitions?" pp. 49-50.

XXII. PROTESTANT NOTIONS OF MORAL CONSCIENCE

A. Some Protestant "problems" with conscience:

1. Even though Luther's stand at the Diet of Worms, with his famous "Hier stehe ich.." position was obviously based in large part on following the dictates of his own conscience,

2. "he expressly refrained from putting freedom of conscience into effect later on.

3. In the first place, he did not enlist freedom of conscience in his own work of reforming theology and founding the Protestant church.

4. Also, he did not appeal to his own conscience any more but wanted his actions to be determined solely by the Bible.

5. He intended to carry out a reform of the church according to the clear and definite precepts of the Scriptures and not according to the dictates of his own conscience or that of his supporters."

Hans Schär, "Protestant Problems with Conscience." In Conscience: Theological and Psychological Perspectives, 79-94. Edited by C. Ellis Nelson. New York: Newman Press [Paulist], 1973, p. 80.

B. Conscience, Protestant theological anthropology of simul iustus et peccator, and Sola fide:

1. Luther "learned that conscience is a tough prosecutor and that against the verdict of conscience man cannot justify himself even by his ethical behavior.

2. Here faith provides the only answer. For this reason, Luther insisted that man must acknowledge the reality of his bad conscience and guilt feelings. Man is a sinner, and his behavior remains sinful." p. 88.

3. Works or ascetical pratices are not the answer:

"The ascetic may deny himself as much as is humanly possible, but he still does not escape his guilt. Therefore asceticism is no guarantee of a good conscience. Conscience accuses and must accuse because its accusations are true.

4. "Luther found his answer in faith alone. In love of God, and by accepting himself as he really is, man submits to God's judgment and providence.

5. He does not achieve a good conscience, but at least he recognizes that God's love is stronger than his own guilt and the verdict of his own conscience." [Schär, p. 89].

C. Other reasons for less room for freedom of conscience:

1. a "Protestant orthodoxy, increasinly rigid and sternly committed to established principles." p. 81.

2. Principle from the Peace of Augsburg of "freedom of religion" in terms of cuius regio, eius religio.

3. "Freedom of conscience" was simply not developed to the same extent then as in the contemporary ethos.

a. As late as the 1864, Pius IX, in his encyclical, Quanta Cura, condemned the "erroneous opinion that is especially injurious to the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, [which is] that freedom of conscience and worship is the proper right of each man and that this should be proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society."

b. Obviously this statement has to be read in its context, and should not be merely opposed to the subsequent formulation form Vatican II:

c. "The Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom.

(1) "Freedom of this kind means that all men should be immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups and every human power so that,

(2) "within due limits, nobody is forced to act against his convictions in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in associations with others.

(3) "The Council further declares that the right to religious freedom is based on the very dignity of the human person as known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself." Dignitatis Humanae, #2.

D. Positive understanding of conscience:

1. "For Luther it is not the function of conscience to pronounce the final judgment on man. That is left to God. Man has access to God's judgment through faith."

2. For Luther and the other reformers, "a good conscience is possible only through God's grace. Grace grants remission of sins, and thus the sinner who admits his guilt overcomes fear. The resulting state of inner peace brings about a good conscience." p. 90.

E. Freedom of conscience and authority:

1. Necessity of freedom for the exercise of conscience:

2. "Man must have this freedom, since freedom is a necessary condition of truthfulness.

3. This means that the individual must preserve his freedom vis-à-vis all authority.

4. Naturally he can bow to authority if impelled by an insight or conviction of conscience,

5. but that does not absolve him from the obligation to preserve a measure of inner freedom from this authority,

6. nor may he obey at the cost of his individual truthfulness.

7. In the Neo-Protestant view, there is only one absolute authority, God.

8. If an experience is felt to be absolute, we must bow to it.

9. The ethical requirements of the Bible, especially those of Jesus Christ, may be, and often are, experienced as absolutes by Protestants." p. 92.

F. Understanding of conscience from Scripture:

1. A "bad conscience" in terms of guilt, etc., is seen clearly, but in terms of Scripture at least,

2. "More important was the Christian insistence on a good conscience, which in the New Testament is often described as Christianity's essential gift to man, along with faith.

3. Attention is paid not only to bad conscience resulting from the commission of an evil deed but also to good conscience as our awareness of having done good and eschewed evil." [Schär, p. 84].

4. Building on this concept of a "good" conscience we can see the importance of conscience and character formation.

G. Good conscience and right faith:

1. "Anyone who has the right kind of faith must have a good conscience, as he is on the right road. Conversely, a good conscience is an infallible sign that one possesses the right faith. The doctrine of justification by faith is apt to lead to this emphasis on a good conscience." p. 93.

2. "Fundamentally, though, the same tension which Luther experienced must be held fast and endured: a recognition of the moral insufficiency of all human behavior in the face of an absolute ethical demand." p. 93.

XXIII. CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDINGS OF CONSCIENCE

A. Conscience: Traditional theology

1. Importance for consideration of this traditional theology

a. Part of the heritage

b. Many theologians still work implicitly out of this background or in reaction to it.

c. Many Christians (Catholics) have been educated in this vocabulary, and so from a pastoral point of view it is important to know.

d. However, later we will be considering other approaches.

2. Conscience seen very much in terms of a "faculty," and somewhat abstracted or extrapolated from the individual's whole personhood.

3. Traditional definition

a. Basically understood conscience as a "faculty"

b. "Conscience is a judgment made by an individual concerning the morality of his actions.

c. More precisely, conscience is a judgment of the practical reason deciding by inference from general principles the moral goodness or malice of a particular act."

d. From Msgr. Giuseppe Graneris. "Conscience." In Dictionary of Moral Theology, 295. Compiled and edited by Francesco Cardinal Roberti and Msgr. Pietro Palazzini. Translated from the Second Italian Edition Under the Direction of Henry J. Yannone. London: Burns & Oates, 1962.

4. Tripartite dimensions of conscience in traditional vocabulary:

a. "(1) syndersis, the basic tendency or capacity within us to know and to do the good;

b. (2) moral science, the process of discovering the particular good which ought to be done or the evil to be avoided;

c. (3) conscience, the specific judgment of the good which `I must do' in this particular situation." [Gula, RIF, p. 131.]

5. Remember that a fundamental tenet of Roman Catholic moral theology is that one must always follow one's conscience

a. Even in cases when that conscience is "erroneous."

b. However, one has an obligation to form and inform one's conscience.

c. Yet, it is still important to understand the distinction between "right" and "erroneous" conscience.

6. "Right" or "erroneous" conscience

a. "A conscience is right or erroneous, depending on whether the judgment formed agrees or disagrees with the objective norm or law.

b. If the error of judgment may be attributed to the subject, a conscience is said to be vincibly erroneous;

c. if not attributable to him, it is said to be invincibly erroneous.

d. Hence, the malice of an act posited with an erroneous conscience is imputable or not, depending on whether the error is vincible or invincible." [Graneris]

e. Invincible error is rooted in invincible ignorance,

(1) whose existence is reaffirmed in Veritatis Splendor, which defines it as

(2) "an ignorance of which the subject is not aware and which he is unable to overcome by himself." [VS, 63]

f. Vincible (and therefore morally culpable) error is based on ignorance which arises

(1) "when man shows little concern for seeking what is true and good,

(2) and conscience becomes almost blind from being accustomed to sin."

(3) [Gaudium et spes, 16, as quoted in Veritatis Splendor, 63].

g. Thus, this distinction is important for a variety of reasons:

(1) Pastorally, e.g. in confession, to help the confessor grasp the level of moral guilt involved

(2) To help clarify matters of conscience formation and information

(3) Perhaps also as a help in clarifying areas of difficulty in the ethos of a given culture/sub-culture and the incumbent moral evangelization.

B. Conscience in Vatican II

1. No key change in teaching, but certainly a reformulation in terms of language and tone.

2. Key passage: Gaudium et spes #16

a. "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey.

(1) Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, tells him inwardly at the right moment: do this, shun that.

(2) For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.

(3) His dignity lies in observing this law, and by it he will be judged.

b. His conscience is man's most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.

c. By conscience, in a wonderful way, that law is made known which is fulfilled in the love of God and of one's neighbor.

d. Through loyalty to conscience Christians are joined to other men in the search for truth

(1) and for the right solution to so many moral problems which arise

(2) both in the life of individuals and from social relationships.

e. Hence, the more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by the objective standards of moral conduct.

f. Yet it often happens that conscience goes astray through ignorance which it is unable to avoid, without thereby losing its dignity.

(1) This cannot be said of the man who takes little trouble to find out what is true and good,

(2) or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin."

g. Translation from The Documents of Vatican II, trans. and ed. Austin P. Flannery, O.P., (New York: Pillar Books, 1975).

3. Shift of paradigm in Vatican II in regards to the relation of conscience and law

a. "The shift from the role of law which is traditionally called the objective norm of morality

b. to conscience which is called the subjective norm of human action is most significant //

c. in showing the move to the subject and to the person.

d. Of course the document stresses the need for a correct conscience, but the impression is given that truth is found in the innermost depths of one's existence."

e. From Charles Curran, "The Changing Anthropological Bases of Catholic Social Ethics," in Readings in Moral Theology No. 5: Official Catholic Social Teaching, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., (New York: Paulist Press, 1986): 196-197.

XXIV. O'CONNELL'S THREE NOTIONS OF CONSCIENCE

A. From Timothy E. O'Connell, "Conscience" ch. 9 in Principles for a Catholic Morality, 103-118. Revised edition, San Francisco: Harper and Row, (1976), 1990.

B. Presupposition: The word "conscience" has a number of common and legitimate meanings.

1. E.g. in terms of guilt feelings: what O'Connell terms "Posterior conscience": the "aspect of the human person that is activated by certain sorts of behavior and provides a sort of gut-level evaluation of that behavior." [O'Connell, p. 104].

2. However, "when the Catholic tradition talks about conscience, it is not talking about posterior conscience.

a. The use of the term in this way is a peculiarly modern phenomenon.

b. The tradition, for its part, uses the term to point at anterior conscience." p. 104.

3. Roles of guilt-feelings

a. "It may happen that guilt feelings will call our attention to a situation or an action for which we are and ought to be truly guilty.

b. And if so, they are to be cherished as helpful guides for human living.

c. But the exact opposite may also be the case. For whatever reason, I may very well feel guilty about something that I should in no way repent." p. 105.

d. Possible Reasons: compulsive behavior, superego guilt feelings, etc.

4. Recall the traditional moral theological vocabulary on conscience

a. "Traditional moral theology habitually distinguished three different meanings for the word `conscience'.

b. And these it delineated by the use of three different terms: synderesis, moral science, and syneidesis." p. 109.

(1) "By synderesis they understood the habit of conscience, the basic sense of responsibility that characterizes the human person.

(2) And by syneidesis they understood the act of conscience, the judgment by which we evaluate a particular action."

(3) Moral science: the process of discovering the particular good which ought to be done or the evil to be avoided.

(4) "We have already seen that the term syneidesis is clearly present in Scripture.

(5) But what of synderesis? The simply and embarrassing fact is that this term does not appear in Scripture.

(a) Indeed, there is no such work in the Greek language.

(b) Rather, it appears that this entire theological tradition is the result of a massive error." p. 109.

5. O'Connell's reformulation of conscience vocabulary:

a. This formulation has been well-received by contemporary moralists, and is used also by Richard Gula in his treatment of conscience in Gula's Reason Informed By Faith; see especially his chart on p. 132.

b. Helpful set of distinctions, though unfortunately not expressed in ordinary common vocabulary

c. O'Connell says that, "We shall assert that the word `conscience', as it is generally used both in theology and in those ordinary conversational usages that refer to anterior conscience, points at one or another of three quite different ideas,

d. that there are three distinct facets of this reality of anterior conscience.

e. And for purposes of simplicity, we shall refer to these as conscience/1, conscience/2, and conscience/3." p. 110.

C. Conscience/1

1. To be human means to be

a. accountable

b. and therefore, to have a capacity for self-direction,

c. which in turn "implies a human responsibility for good direction." [O'Connell, p. 110]

2. Conscience/1 refers to "conscience as an abiding human characteristic,

3. to a general sense of value,

4. an awareness of personal responsibility,

5. that is utterly emblematic of the human person." [O'Connell, p. 110]

6. Similar to Thomas' understanding of the habit of first moral principles

D. Conscience/2

1. Conscience/1 leads to Conscience/2, because it "force individual human persons to search out the objective moral value of their situation.

a. They feel obliged to analyze their behavior and their world,

b. to seek to discover what is the really right thing and what is not.

2. This search, this exercise of moral reasoning, can be termed conscience/2.

3. "For if conscience/1 is a characteristic, conscience/2 is the process which that characteristic demands.

a. Conscience/2 deals with the effort to achieve a specific perception of values, concrete individual values.

b. It is the ongoing process of reflection, discernment, discussion, and analysis in which human beings are always engaged." [O'Connell, p. 111].

4. Therefore, conscience/2 is seen as the specific perception of concrete individual values.

5. i.e., conscience while being formed

6. therefore is fallible at this stage, i.e., definite possibility of error.

7. Also there will be disagreement among people on the level of conscience/2.

8. Therefore, greater need for assistance, e.g., from the Church and the whole Christian community at this level.

9. As Gula notes, "genuine conscience is formed in dialogue, not in isolation. The work of conscience/2 is to carry on this dialogue with the sources of moral wisdom." [RIF, p. 135].

E. Conscience/3

1. "If conscience/1 is a characteristic and conscience/2 is a process, conscience/3 is an event.

2. And as such, conscience/3 is consummately concrete.

3. It is the concrete judgment of a specific person pertaining to her or his own immediate action." p. 112.

4. "Indeed, by the personal decision either to accept or to refuse the demand of conscience/3, the moral agent engages either in an act of sanctity or in actual sin." p. 112.

5. formed conscience, i.e., an "honest" decision,

a. even if objectively wrong,

b. if one acts of this formed conscience one will be doing "good"

XXV. SIN

A. Traditional Roman Catholic Understanding of Sin

1. Doctrine of Original Sin

a. Consider the following definition from Josef Rudin, in his article, "A Catholic View of Conscience." In Conscience: Theological and Psychological Perspectives, ed. C. Ellis Nelson (New York: Newman Press [Paulist], 1973), p. 101.

b. "According to the Catholic conception, original sin has not in any way inwardly corrupted and poisoned man's nature.

c. "The Fall is viewed rather as a breaking-away from friendship with God,

(1) resulting in the loss of man's alleged supernatural endowments and

(2) in a fatal weakening of his nature as well as a confounding of instinct and spirit.

d. "Redemption through Christ must therefore be understood as a summons to man

(1) for a resumption of the supernatural filial relationship with God and

(2) for the gradual restoration of his weakened nature." p. 101.

2. Kinds and degree of sin, according to Roman Catholics

a. Mortal Sin

(1) Distinction between grave and mortal

(2) "I am, however, sure that almost no moral theologian would be happy with the expression:

(a) `It is dutiful to add that some sins, regarding their matter, are intrinsically grave and mortal' ([Reconcilatio et Paenitentia {1983 Apostolic Exhortation}, para. 17).

(b) In today's moral theology, just as in the best of our tradition, the word `grave' is used regarding the matter,

(3) The quoted sentence would make sense only if it could be supposed that the transgressor in such matters is automatically presumed to have committed a mortal sin.

(4) In view of the various levels of personal development of consciousness and conscience,

(a) never unrelated to the cultural conditions,

(b) it seems to be utterly impossible that transgressions of certain laws, considered rightly to be grave, would quasi-automatically imply a mortal sin.

(5) We still have to distinguish most carefully the objective and the subjective dimension." p. 105.

(6) From Bernard Häring's "Sin in Post-Vatican II Theology." In Personalist Morals: Mélanges Louis Janssens, 87-107. Edited by Joseph A. Selling. Louvain, 1988.

b. Venial Sin

3. Theological Understanding of Sin and Confessional Practice engendered by the manualist tradition:

a. "Traditionally, `disobedience to God' seemed to be the key-word.

(1) In the manuals it generally had the sense of disobedience to law.

(2) So it seemed that law was the main or exclusive manner by which the will of God was mediated.

(3) As a consequence, sin was defined in a legalistic context in which the transgression of even small precepts of the Church could be labeled as grave sin." [Häring, p. 102.]

b. Connection of understanding of sin to theological understanding of grace

B. Protestant traditional understanding of Sin

1. How to speak of Sin?

a. Always in the context of God's grace!

b. cf. Rm 5:20 "Where sin was overflowing there grace was even greater."

2. Recall the article on "Brave Sinning" by Gritsch and Jenson

3. Reluctance to differentiate between "Sin" and "sins" or "mortal" and "venial"

4. E.g., following expression of Paul Ramsey:

5. "If there can be proportionate reason for permitting moral evil, there can be, in principle, proportionate reason for intending it directly, provided only that the expected good is great enough. (Here great can only mean extensive, since we agree that qualitatively there is no more serious evil than sin."

C. Possible Protestant Reformulation of the Doctrine of Corrupt Rationality,

1. From James Gustafson's CH. 6: MAN IN RELATION TO GOD AND THE WORLD, in Vol. 1 of his Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981.

2. Gustafson expresses the doctrine of sin in terms of "human fault"

a. "There are four facets of the `human fault' that are experienced, I dare to affirm, by all human beings. The Christian tradition has had insight into all four:

(1) the experience of misplaced trust or confidence (the traditional problem of `idolatry'),

(2) the experience of misplaced valuations of objects of desire (the traditional problem of wrongly ordered love),

(3) the experience of erroneous perceptions of the relations of things to each other and of our understanding of things (the traditional problem of `corrupt' rationality), and

(4) the experience of unfulfilled obligations and duties (the traditional problem of disobedience).

b. The doctrines of sin in the theological tradition arise out of these experiences; what makes them `sin' is that persons have a measure of accountability to God in each." p. 294.

3. Corrupt rationality:

a. "If, however, rationality is considered as an activity, not a faculty, the traditional issue can be reformulated.

b. "If rational activity is faulted, it is not necessarily always faulted, and

c. the fault has different consequences for different kinds of rational activity." p. 300.

d. I'd say this insight represents a real advance in traditional Protestant moral thought.

e. "The fault of rationality is not so much a matter of errors in logic as it is in misconstruing that realm of reality that engages us;

f. it is a matter of the wrong depiction and interpretation of the particular "world" that attracts our attention and that evokes our activity." p. 300.

4. Some continuing problems with Gustafson's identification/replacement of sin (and therefore evil) with fault (failing).

XXVI. OTHER KEY THEMES OF THE MORAL LIFE

A. Character and Virtues

1. Contribution of Stanley Hauerwas et. al.

2. Importance for consideration of the aspects of moral formation

3. Corrective for static conceptions of aspects of fundamental moral theology, like conscience for example.

B. Faith and Works

1. Traditional purpose of Christian ethics, according to James Gustafson:

2. "to assist morally serious Christian people to make proper moral judgments and engage in right moral actions, and

3. to stimulate Christian people to reform (or in some cases defend) the social arrangements of their societies and of the human community as a whole.

4. "Much of the literature, particularly the Protestant literature, has sought to be prophetic,

5. to establish a sound moral indictment of current practices or orders of life in light of the claims of biblical faith.

6. "Roman Catholic literature has in the past more characteristically sought to prescribe and proscribe specific acts."

[James M. Gustafson, Theology and Ethics. Volume 1 of Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981, p. 69].

C. The Moral Community

1. H. Richard Niebuhr

2. Gustafson's introduction to Niebuhr's thought:

a. "He [H. Richard Niebuhr] conceived of Christian ethics to be the effort of the Christian community to criticize its moral action by means of reflection.

b. "This critical inquiry is not confined to the process of moral self-judgment in the community, to the process of evaluation of its life in the light of certain expectations and norms.

c. "Rather it is a critical inquiry in a more generous philosophical sense, an inquiry into the nature of its moral life,

d. the principles of life (principles in terms of those things that are most universally true and proper about its being).

e. "Thus a major part of ethics is a phenomenological analysis of man's moral existence. ...

f. "Ethics is not the narrative account of the moral action of members of the Christian community.

g. "It has the task of disclosing the basic pattern, the morphology of the life and action of the Christian community in the moral sphere--the way of thinking and acting that is true to its character as a community of me before God." p. 8.

[James M. Gustafson "Introduction." To H. Richard Niebuhr's The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy, 6-41. New York: Harper & Row, 1963].

3. Stanley Hauerwas and the "story-formed" community

4. JTB's work on cross-cultural and pluralistic understandings of the moral community.

5. Hans Küng and others on global ethics.

XXVII. FINAL EVALUATION

A. Current state of affairs

1. Recall positive efforts, like this annual octave of Christian unity

2. Models of moral theology

a. Remember inherent limit of any model, i.e., that is incomplete

b. Leave room for possibility of cross-fertilization

c. See dialogue as a requirement of our common Christian search for the truth

B. Points of Contact and cooperation

1. World Council of Churches and Roman Catholicism

2. Common human problems require coordinated effort

3. Problems with WCC ecclesiology and its political model

C. Points of Divergence and disagreement

1. This will always be the case to a certain degree

2. No one, and no one confession says that they have unilaterally arrived at the fullness of truth

3. Even within an individual confession we find divergences and disagreements

D. Methodology for evaluation and dialogue

1. Remember my introductory lecture on stages of dialogue and necessity for conversion to dialogue

2. Recall too, St. Ignatius' principle of putting the best possible interpretation on another's words and actions.

3. Our final and ultimate judge is Jesus Christ (therefore, we are exempted from undertaking this role ourselves, which however does not exempt us from being critical in a positive fashion).

E. Directions for the future

1. Study one another

2. Common efforts

3. Common prayer

F. Course evaluation

********